Youth Sports Participation Is Climbing Again

Anyone who runs a club or an athletic department has felt the last few years in their registration numbers, one way or another. The Aspen Institute's State of Play 2025 report — its annual read on youth sports in the US — put a number on what a lot of programs were already sensing: participation is climbing again after years of being flat.

What the Data Actually Says

Per Project Play's own summary, about 55.4% of kids aged 6–17 played a sport regularly as of the latest federal data, with the Sports & Fitness Industry Association's own figures running higher for 2024. Fourteen states have already hit the federal government's 63% participation target for 2030. Flag football and boys' volleyball specifically came up as sports that have surged. None of that is dramatic on its own, but it adds up to more teams, more rosters, and more kit orders than the same programs were placing three or four years ago.

The Part That Doesn't Show Up in the Headline Number

The same report flags something worth planning around directly: participation costs are up 46% since 2019, and the gap in regular play between higher- and lower-income families has widened to over 20 percentage points. Practically, that means more programs are trying to do more with a tighter budget per player — which is exactly the kind of pressure that makes MOQ, turnaround time, and per-unit cost the actual deciding factors in a kit order, more than they might have been a few years back.

What This Means If You're Planning Next Season's Order

Growing participation usually shows up as a sizing problem before it shows up as anything else — a program that ordered for 60 players last year suddenly needs to plan for 75, and often doesn't know that until registration closes, which is later than most kit lead times want it to be. If your numbers have been trending up, it's worth over-ordering slightly across your most common sizes rather than exact-to-roster, and getting a quote in earlier than you think you need to.

Get a Quote

Source: Aspen Institute, State of Play 2025 — Participation Trends, Project Play.