News
Original content from the Aspen Institute
Participation in youth sports is getting more expensive – and there seems no end in sight.
The average U.S. sports family spent $1,016 on their child’s primary sport in 2024, a 46% increase since 2019, according to the Aspen Institute’s latest parent survey in partnership with Utah State University and Louisiana Tech University. The rising commercialization of youth sports impacts who can access quality sports opportunities or whether some children play at all.
The Aspen Institute’s State of Play Washington D.C. report, released in 2025, explored the role sports can play to reduce student truancy in schools. High levels of involvement in school sports are one of the strongest correlations with lower risk of cutting or skipping class and school misbehavior, according to a study by the Women’s Sports Foundation.
Sports offerings are only as good as the ability to market them. Families need to know how and when to register, costs to play, scholarship opportunities, locations of practices and games, and much more. We heard from parents who say they don’t have enough information about available sports programs, including costs.
Very few children or parents we spoke with said children play outside on their own. That’s a shame. The loss of free play costs children opportunities to exercise creativity, set and achieve goals, learn interpersonal skills and develop a love of physical activity for its own sake. Baton Rouge is not unique.
Oakland’s passion for sports was recognized by the Aspen Institute in “State of Play Oakland,” the 11th community report from our Project Play initiative. Two data points stood about above all: only 14% of Oakland youth received the 60 minutes of physical activity per day recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (below the U.S. average of 23%). And just 9% of Oakland girls were sufficiently physically active. The good news is many organizations and leaders in the city saw the numbers and got to work.
East Baton Rouge Parish Schools offers magnet programs to retain students, but that has consequences for extracurricular activities: Thousands of students don’t attend schools near their homes and are transported right after school back to their homes. For many children, their only way home is the school bus, which can be a long ride across the parish.
Changes in the climate increasingly expose football players (and all athletes in outdoor sports) to higher temperatures and dangerous levels of humidity that surpass recommended safety thresholds. Not only football is being affected, of course. How, or if, children play sports and recreate outdoors continues to be impacted by climate change, and the challenges are not going away.
Many youth sports providers in the public and private sectors don’t communicate much with each other, in part due to distrust of each other. There is a belief by some that no intersection exists between people who strive to use sports as an economic engine and people who focus on providing affordable, quality access for all children. The divide between the haves and have-nots in youth sports within East Baton Rouge Parish resembles that in the educational environment.
Last week, Boston became the 10th city to endorse the Children’s Bill of Rights in Sports when Mayor Michele Wu signed the Project Play-developed statement at a public event and announced $300,000 in grants to support 55 community-based organizations. In adopting it, the mayor affirmed that “the City’s approach to youth sports will center the needs of youth, invest in play and qualified coaches, and commit to safe, healthy sports environments for all youth.”
The Aspen Institute recognizes Boston for its leadership and encourages other cities to take note of the experiment unfolding there – an example of how a municipality can unlock opportunities for youth through sports. Here, we explore one key innovation: a youth sports directory.
Children with disabilities often face more barriers to access sports. These challenges exist due to lack of awareness from those without disabilities to include them, lack of opportunities for training and competition, lack of accessible facilities, limited resources and perceptions about the interests and abilities of youth with disabilities to play sports. Greater promotion in schools of integrated sports — meaning pairing children with and without physical or intellectual disabilities on the same team — can help increase access to sports for children with disabilities.