A "free market" is one in which all the participants of the market have perfect information and act completely rationally. This is, of course, an academic ideal, similar to solving a physics problem that tells you to ignore friction.
What we have here is a "capitalist market", where those with more power (capital) within the market leverage it to exploit the other participants. Private Equity uses their money to extract as much money as possible from a segment of the market, usually destroying it in the process. But for a beautiful moment in time they created a lot of value for shareholders!
It is a good example of neoliberalism gone completely insane and your comment is a good example of the religion of neoliberalism.
It is this deluded idea that "the market is always right" so naturally to not let market forces at work in children's sports is equivalent to a type of moral wrong.
The real insanity of neoliberalism is in convincing people like you that this is some kind of natural law like gravity, so to object is like objecting to the law of gravity to the point you can't even understand why you are being down voted.
It is actually a form of scientism and the misapplication of the efficient market hypothesis to unwarranted situations.
edit: Would like to understand from downvoters how this does not meet free market principles?