Over the last 15 years, the baseball showcase industry has ballooned into a multi-million-dollar juggernaut. But is the cost of exposure for amateur baseball players really justifiable?

Every summer, thousands of teenage baseball players travel to amateur showcases and tournaments in hopes of being seen by coaches and scouts. In many cases, they pay hefty registration fees for this privilege. They—and their parents—assume that money is well spent, especially if they come from parts of the country that are not traditional hotbeds of baseball talent.

The allure of Perfect Game is obvious. The largest of its tournaments brings in thousands of spectators, including hundreds of scouts and college representatives, and generates half a million dollars in profit. The company boasts a list of alumni participants who have gone on to college and professional baseball. Its website features a testimonial from New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman and an ad with Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon's bespectacled mug.

None of these companies responded to repeated requests for comment, but they all offer kids as young as pre-pubescence the chance to be seen by scouts. The process starts early because for many ballplayers, waiting until the time in high school when most of their peers start thinking about which college to attend—their junior or senior year—is already too late. Scholarships have already been offered. Opinions already have been formed by pro scouts.

At the forefront of the industry is Perfect Game USA. Founded in the 1990s in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Perfect Game bills itself as "The World's Largest Baseball Scouting Service." Though it is not the only organization in the amateur showcase and tournament landscape, Perfect Game has the greatest reach and draws the largest number of participants. Other organizations, like Prep Baseball Report and RBI Baseball do some of the same things, but Perfect Game set the trend that the amateur baseball world follows.

Perfect Game promises to get you seen. But not for free. Registration fees for showcases, some of which goes toward facilities and giveaway swag for the participants, can range from $100 to $1,000 per entry. There's also Perfect Game Series Challenge testing that measures a player's attributes separate from the showcases and costs $200. Test results are included in the individual player profiles maintained by Perfect Game, and they can impact a player's overall ranking—only adding to the pressure for high school kids to participate.

Then there are the tournaments, which are separate from the showcases and require joining a travel team—itself a costly proposition. Even watching isn't free: Showcases charge subscription fees for scouts to have access to the reports and full rankings lists. Everyone pays into the machine.

For some young players, the cost is worthwhile. They have Perfect Game and similar organizations to thank for attention from major universities and Major League Baseball franchises. They've been drafted out of high school in the first and second round despite coming from places where only a sprinkling of Division III colleges bother to attend their prep games, and even then, that's usually because a high school coach has asked them to come.

Gavin Lux was selected in the first round of the 2016 MLB Draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers out of a high school in Kenosha, Wisconsin that had never before seen a player selected. He's exactly the kind of player who seems to have benefited from Perfect Game. Ben Rortvedt, who was plucked by the Minnesota Twins in the second round of the same draft out of Verona, Wisconsin is another.

"I played on a really good travel ball organization, and that got us into the Perfect Game tournaments. Doing that led to a lot of great opportunities," Lux told VICE Sports following a game in the Single A Midwest League where, just a year removed from high school, the 19-year-old is already playing in full-season affiliated ball.