The Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative put the following data points front and center at its annual summit in Boston:
Youth sports participation rose to 58% in 2024
But the household income gap continued to widen from 2023 to 2024
And lowest income households (0-99% of federal poverty level) were the only economic category with decreased participation from 2023 to 2024
The figures come from the National Survey of Children’s Health, which is federally funded and conducted by the Census Bureau. The data lags, so it’s entirely possible that the current participation rate is already over 60%.
The figures were presented through the lens of Project Play’s consistent thesis of 1) increasing participation to 63% by 2030, and 2) that rising youth sports costs and professionalized club and travel teams are squeezing out low-income families and contracting community-based options.
But a deeper dive into both the federal survey and the organization’s own data paints a more nuanced picture.
🔬 Data Deep Dive:
Let’s start with the participation figure of households under the poverty line in 2024: 36.3%.
That is down 0.3% percentage points from the 2023 survey. But sports participation among that group is still significantly higher than participation in other extracurricular activities:
sports (36.3%)
other clubs and organizations (30.4%)
arts (30.1%)
Sports participation in the cohort has also risen 5% since 2019 while arts and clubs have seen double-digit decreases— indicating that sports is holding up better than alternatives. Whatever's suppressing low-income participation isn't unique to youth sports— and it may not be primarily about cost.
Participation rose (to 45.7%) among households at 100-199% of the federal poverty level. That cohort has also only experienced a 1% percentage point participation drop since 2016-17, according to the federal data. Meanwhile, other clubs and arts are down 8% and 16%, respectively.
Sports doesn't just have the highest floor among structured youth activities— it has the highest participation at every income level. The pattern is consistent: families across income ranges access sports more than alternatives. The wide income gap is evidence that sports is the most income-elastic activity at the top. That doesn’t mean it’s exclusionary at the bottom.
Youth sports is also experiencing participation growth among the lowest income households since 2019 that is 2.9x higher than the highest income households (5% to 2%) — the same year Project Play continually points to when it says costs are up 46%. And it’s worth noting, that cost number isn’t inflation-adjusted. Inflation between 2019 and 2024 was around 22%, so roughly half of the increase in cost comes from general inflation alone, and travel costs at the highest end of the market skew the averages further. The rise in median participation cost, when inflation-adjusted, is almost certainly less shocking.
So two things can be true: Over the long arc, lower-income participation is down significantly and the income gap has widened from the 2016-17 baseline. But since 2019, the bottom bracket has rebounded faster than the top, despite all of the discussed madness in youth sports:
As for club and travel sports, which receive much of the ire in media coverage and now perhaps in proposed legislation: Project Play data contradicts these prevalent narratives too.
Community-based teams account for 53% of participation, according to a 2024 survey of parents, compared to just 15% for elite club teams. Videos like the ones posted here would have you believe community sports no longer exist.
The same survey found that parents say they feel more pressured by school coaches to specialize in one sport than by non-school or club coaches. So the pressure to specialize isn’t a problem that’s unique to club sports. In fact, across all income bands, more parents say they feel “no pressure” from club coaches than school coaches.
What may be happening here is that participation data and general sentiment around the absurdities of the high-end of the youth sports market are being conflated to blame one (travel sports expenses) for the other (lower income participation)— and that may be driving proposed legislation.
The narrative that has taken root is that private capital is bad for youth sports, which is not good for the industry.
There are cases where that is absolutely true. And if the industry feels there are bad actors whose actions sully things for everyone else, it would do best to distance itself from them.
But the perception that lower income bands are being priced out and youth sports are best left to community-run organizations and scholastic organizations isn’t fully supported by the data.
Ergo, the industry would be smart to fight back with its own narrative supported by facts and real-world examples. Specifically:
Why professionalized rec orgs - like i9 Sports, Youth Athletes United, Middle School Matchup, and ESF Camps, who all spoke on our panel - fill a crucial gap between often poorly-run community efforts and elite circuits at reasonable price points. These are for-profit companies expanding participation in generally positive ways. This middle ground area also probably represents the largest TAM of youth sports— more sports, less travel, better experiences, reasonable costs.
How economies of scale and sponsorship can drive down participation costs. Everyone talks about this but someone needs to actually prove it.
Why professionalization leads to increased standards in safety and compliance.
These are all winning messages. The narrative wants to drive more participation into the hands of volunteer-based community efforts. Certainly, there’s lots of good there, and no one is going to argue over well-run community based programs— at all income levels. But those experiences vary wildly, and for-profit ventures can, and do, fill a crucial gap in the market. The industry needs to stop apologizing for solving a problem the volunteer system can’t always solve.
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