Youth sports costs over $1,000 per year, pushing families to sidelines

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill heard warnings Tuesday about the skyrocketing cost of youth sports pushing American families to the sidelines and raising economic and health concerns.

“$40 billion a year, according to our research, is flowing through youth sports,” Tom Farrey, the founder and executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, told “Fox & Friends” Wednesday. “And that’s just the parents’ spend. That’s not the public spend, that’s not private equity.”

“That’s almost twice as much money as is flowing through the NFL.”

Farrey participated in Tuesday’s hearing with the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education titled “Benched: The Crisis in American Youth Sports and Its Cost to Our Future.”

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The average cost for a child to play a sport is more than $1,000 per year, representing a 46% increase since 2019, according to the Aspen Institute. Today, 70% of kids quit organized sports by age 13, the group warned.

Farrey attributed the numbers to the shift away from local recreational leagues in favor of travel leagues that require more commitment. Travel leagues have expanded in recent years, from the high school level all the way down to early elementary school.

“And once we create these trial-based travel teams, which are often private, the cost goes from a couple hundred dollars a year to several thousand dollars a year. And it starts structurally pushing aside a lot of kids who can’t afford it,” he said.

Just 24% of kids from low-income homes play recreational sports, compared to 40% of kids from high-income homes, according to a 2021 survey from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.

Time pressure is another factor.

“Our research shows that the average family spends three hours and 20 minutes a day on their kids’ youth sports,” Farrey said, noting the time requirement becomes more challenging for parents with multiple children in sports.

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The subcommittee saw broad agreement about “the value of sports and building healthy kids in terms of military readiness, strong, cohesive communities [and] bringing down health care costs,” Farley said, adding participants agreed that “kids who play sports are more likely to do better in life.”

Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., pointed to the mental and physical health hazards associated with a decline in youth sports participation, claiming “inactive youth feel negatively about themselves at nearly double the rate of youth who are active.”

“Today, one in three youth ages 10 to 17 are overweight or obese. Medical expenses associated with obesity alone cost taxpayers $173 billion a year, with lifetime costs for today’s obese youth projected to exceed a trillion dollars,” Kiley said in his opening statement.

To make youth sports more accessible, Farrey suggested reviving the recreational leagues of his childhood.

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“Bring back recreational leagues, have park and recs say, ‘It is really important that we have low-cost sports up through at least six or seventh or maybe eighth grade, and prioritize the field space.’”

“We don’t need the federal government to come in and solve the problem here,” he added. “This can be done on a community-by-community basis.”