Breaking Down New Youth Sports Participation Numbers

Project Play published its takeaways from SFIA’s 2025 data.

The full rundown is here. Some of the big points:

Everything continues to appear on pace to reach the consensus industry goal of 63% youth sports participation by 2030. We will probably get there before 2030, if we had to guess. Girls participation is higher than it has been in over a decade
Golf and tennis have experienced massive participation surges while flag football also continues to experience substantial growth. A caveat with golf and tennis: There is definitely growth, as we have documented in both sports. But SFIA uses participation figures provided by the National Golf Foundation and USTA, and those organizations often have a broader view on what constitutes participation compared to the traditional bookkeeping with all other sports.
SFIA says the number of youth coaches and the level of training available for youth coaches continues to decrease.

On the cost of youth sports front: Project Play says the household income “divide widened sharply in 2025.”

While regular participation for kids ages 6-12 in households earning $100,000 or more grew by 7% over one year, participation for youth in households earning $25,000 or less dropped by 7%. In 2022, the participation gap between the highest- and lowest-income tiers stood at 14.5 percentage points. By 2025, that gap expanded to 24.8 percentage points. U.S. Census Bureau data estimates that 11% of children ages 6-17 (5.4 million) live in households earning $25,000 or less.

“A 7% single-year drop is stunning and bad,” said Linda Flanagan, author of the book “Take Back the Game” that documents challenges in youth sports. “Is it a warning sign? It should be for public health officials, as this low-income, low-activity demographic desperately needs sports and exercise. State and local officials are going to have to start funding sports options for kids in these communities as the private options are increasingly out of sight.”

We have noted our issues with SFIA’s use of the under-$25K bracket in the past. Those still stand here. But more glaring is that Project Play’s take conflicts with its own past work.

The 2019 State of Play report said "in 2018, 22% of kids ages 6 to 12 in households with incomes under $25,000 played sports on a regular basis, compared to 43% of kids from homes earning $100,000 or more."

In other words: Participation in the lowest household income group is basically flat — up 1%, actually — over the last seven years and not at “historic lows,” as the Project Play chart above claims. And the gap between the lowest and highest groups has grown only about four points in that span.

Also keep in mind: The federal poverty level for a household of four in 2018 was $25,100. It was $32,150 in 2025. So that flat participation comes despite the income group going from at FPL to well below it.

Not to mention the fact there are roughly 22M more households in the U.S. making $100K now than did in 2018 (none of these figures are adjusted for inflation) while the sub-$25K group continually gets smaller in overall size.

Census records we looked at suggested the group has shrunk by close to 25% in recent years. We could not replicate the figure of 5.4M kids living in these households, and the records suggest that may be a significant overestimation. But there are myriad forms and ways to analyze census data. There are obviously also surveying challenges involved with such a low income group as well.

This is misleading.

Linda Flanagan’s quote helps Project Play fuel a narrative about lower-income participation that is only partly true at best. This narrative (intentionally or otherwise) vilifies most everyone in the for-profit side of youth sports, and it has led directly to misguided proposed policy.

Project Play routinely interprets SFIA and other data in a manner that furthers this narrative, and, I suspect, supports a need for more funding. Most of their comparisons for SFIA data date back to 2018 or even 2012. So why compare income brackets from only 2022?

Because it tells the worst possible story— the end of Covid year when pandemic-era supports were still propping up low-income households and pandemic worries still impacted participation rates in many activities.

I recreated their chart with the 2018 figures from their own 2019 report, and it tells us a much different story:

AI updated version of Project Play’s chart to include 2018 comparison

And most important here is that $25,000 remains a fixed number despite inflation moving the federal poverty line up substantially.

In 2018, the federal poverty line was roughly $25k for a family of four. In 2025, it was around $32k— an increase of around 28%.

So households in 2025 under $25,000 represent a much poorer cohort— only 78% of the federal poverty line. Which means none of these rate changes represent a true apples-to-apples comparison. And yet, despite the failure to change the threshold, participation is actually UP SLIGHTLY since 2018 among now even poorer households. Never mind that the increase among households over $100k - which, in 2025, represent more middle-class households than in 2018 - is less dramatic.

In other words, choosing 2022 as a comparison point portrays the most extreme version of participation gaps, and implies a decline among the poorest cohort, which likely isn’t even the case.

So is this really “stunning and bad?” The answer is probably not. As we’ve pointed out before, participation and spend is increasing among wealthier families, but it doesn’t mean participation among poor families is collapsing.