Researchers found that compared to people born in earlier decades, youths born in the 1990s spent more of their recreational time playing formal sports – coached by adults and wearing uniforms – than with friends and neighbors playing informal matchups organized by kids.
“Overall, there’s been a pretty healthy mix across generations and among our respondents in playing both informal and formally organized sports, both in general and in the sport one played the most,” said Chris Knoester, lead author of the study and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University.
“But the data clearly showed a shift toward playing more formal sports across generations. And we found evidence of socioeconomic status differences primarily emerging among those born in the 1990s: People who came from higher social class backgrounds and whose parents were college educated were more likely to play formal sports disproportionately.”
Knoester conducted the study with Chris Bjork, professor of education at Vassar College. The research was published online recently in the journal Leisure Sciences.
Considering that private coaching and travel teams are widely seen as necessary to develop elite athletes, the researchers note there is some irony to this shift away from playing for the love of the game. Take Norway’s medal dominance in the 2026 Winter Olympics, attributed at least in part to a lifestyle that revolves around public participation.
“If you keep people playing sports for longer, then you have a broader base. If you nurture informal activity where people grow to love it, and persist in it, over and beyond whatever formal training you get, then you end up flourishing, being more creative, and essentially developing a greater passion for the activities,” Knoester said.
“Formal sports are supposed to be these rational ways of improving performance, but informal sports activities seem to be at least as important for success.”
The study used survey data on 3,845 adults who participated in the National Sports and Society Survey (NSASS), sponsored by Ohio State’s Sports and Society Initiative. Those surveyed volunteered to participate through the American Population Panel, run by Ohio State’s Center for Human Resource Research. Participants between age 21 and 65, who came from all 50 states, answered the survey online between the fall of 2018 and spring of 2019.
Knoester and Bjork focused the analysis on the extent to which respondents born in the 1950s through the 1990s reported playing backyard sports with friends versus organized sports with adults in charge, and whether social class and parent education levels influenced the patterns.
These national survey results showing a shift from informal to formal sports offer the best historical evidence at the individual level of what people familiar with the youth sports landscape have been talking about for quite a while, Knoester said. The findings also line up with data from the Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative, showing that in recent years, youths who are regularly playing sports are now spending less than 25% of their sports participation time in informal, versus formal, sports settings.
And why does it matter? There are costs and benefits to both approaches, the researchers say – and the presumed advantages for kids from wealthier families who have more access to organized sports may not result in elite athletic status despite the heavy investment.
Knoester and Bjork found in a separate study that parents are spending more time, resources and money on kids’ sports. Project Play estimates parents pay about $1,500 per year per child participating in sports, and Bjork has found from interviewing parents that they tend to underestimate investments in travel time and costs for gas, hotels and babysitters.
“A common argument people make in favor of commercialization and increased specialization is that kids have to commit at a really young age if they’re going to make it to elite levels and, for example, get selected for an Olympic team. But it is less clear that that’s actually going to produce the outcome that people think it will have,” said Bjork, who is co-author of the book “More Than Just a Game: How the Youth Sports Industry Is Changing the Way We Parent and What to Do About It.”
“There has been this steady increase not only in sports, but across all extracurricular activities, toward intensive parenting and parents taking a much more active role in managing their children’s sporting careers,” he said. “Related to that is this desire to provide their kids with an advantage over other kids as opposed to just letting them have fun and socialize with kids in the neighborhood.”
And therein lies part of the rub – the loss of life lessons learned from informal play and less time experiencing the pure enjoyment of an activity with friends, Knoester said.
“Informal sports typically, by definition, are more focused on and organized by children themselves. Consequently, they tend to emphasize fun and relationships to a greater extent. They generally offer more opportunities for children to make arrangements, to make decisions, to negotiate with one another and otherwise take ownership of the activities,” he said.
“In contrast, formal sports tend to focus more upon listening to expert adults, working hard, being obedient, learning the so-called ‘right’ way to play, improving performance, developing elite skills and winning games.”
One way to expand opportunity for kids without imposing so much performance pressure would be supporting local community-based organizations that have lost funding and participants over the years, Bjork said.
“I’d also encourage parents to be cognizant of these trends and to think about their long-term goals for their kids and if a specialization path fits into those goals or not,” he said, “because a lot of parents are following what their neighbors are doing without considering what’s best for their own kids.”
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Contacts:
Chris Knoester, knoester.1@osu.edu
Chris Bjork, chbjork@vassar.edu
Written by Emily Caldwell, caldwell.151@osu.edu; 614-292-8152
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