Kids Are Flocking to Two Sports Baseball Should Be Studying
Tennis and golf sold kids on a game they can play for life. Baseball loses a third of its 6-year-olds by 17, and fewer adults are coaching.
Baseball loses a third of its players between ages 6 and 17
The World Series is over. The numbers that decide who plays baseball at 35 just came out, and they aren’t flattering.
New youth participation data released Oct. 27 shows tennis and golf posting the biggest gains of any sports since 2019, while baseball steadily loses players as kids age, from 18% of 6-year-olds to 12% of 17-year-olds. The same report says the number of adults coaching kids 14 and under has fallen for three straight years. For adult leagues, that’s the future player pool and the volunteer pool shrinking at the same time.
The Aspen Institute’s Project Play published its analysis of 2025 Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) data on Oct. 27, 2026. The headline is good news overall: core team-sport participation among kids 6 to 17 hit nearly 41% in 2025, the highest level in 12 years, per the report and Youth Sports Business Report.
Baseball is not one of the winners. Aspen groups it with soccer under “retention challenges”: baseball participation falls from 18% at age 6 to 12% at age 17, and the report names early sport specialization as a key driver of burnout and overuse injuries in both sports. Basketball moves the other way, climbing from 19% at age 6 to nearly 29% at 13.
The data comes from a national online survey of 18,000 people conducted for SFIA by Sports Marketing Surveys. “Core” participation means playing a sport regularly, with the threshold set sport by sport.
Every adult league recruits from the people who were still playing at 17.
A sport that sheds a third of its kids before adulthood starts every adult season with a smaller pool of returning players.
Tennis and golf sold kids on playing for life
Between 2019 and 2025, tennis core participation rose 72% among kids 6 to 12 and 46% among ages 13 to 17. Golf rose 55% and 73% across the same age groups, according to Project Play.
The report credits new formats and technology, not just pandemic momentum. Golf courses added shorter rounds, night par-3 golf with music, and putting courses. Indoor simulators, ball-tracer technology at driving ranges, and venues like Topgolf turned the sport into something casual and social. On the tennis side, the USTA says eight in 10 tennis players plan to keep playing recreationally after they finish organized tennis.
That last number is the one baseball should study. Tennis and golf are pitching kids on a game they never have to stop playing. Youth baseball rarely makes that pitch, and adult baseball leagues are the only place it can be true.
League owners and officers have a message the youth game mostly doesn’t use: baseball doesn’t end at 18.
Shorter formats, tech-tracked hitting leagues and social nights are the same tools that are working in golf.
Fewer adults are coaching, and the ones who are keep getting older
The same Aspen report found the number of active coaches of kids 14 and under fell from 8.4 million in 2022 to 6.9 million in 2025, the third straight year of decline. Self-identified former coaches rose to 12.3 million. Coaches 55 and older now make up 43% of that coaching field, and annual training in CPR, concussion management and injury prevention dropped by double digits from 2020 to 2025, per Project Play.
The report also flags cost: participation among kids 6 to 12 in households earning $25,000 or less fell 7% in 2025 while every higher income bracket grew.
Adult league players are often the dads, moms and neighbors who coach the local youth teams.
Fewer volunteer coaches means fewer kids staying in baseball long enough to join an adult league later, and a league that helps its players coach youth teams is protecting its own future.
Also this week
A league renames itself to grow. The TCABL is now the South Sound Adult Baseball League, the league announced on X on Oct. 28, saying the new name reflects a growing league and aims to bring in more players across Washington’s South Sound.
Money is chasing baseball fandom. Digital Fuel Capital announced a strategic investment in apparel and content brand Baseball Lifestyle 101 on Oct. 20. The firm says BL101 ranked No. 42 on the Inc. 5000, has more than 100 employees, sells to youth and adult players, and plans to acquire other fandom-focused companies.
What people are asking
Is youth baseball participation declining?
Baseball’s participation drops as kids age. According to the Aspen Institute’s Oct. 27, 2026 analysis of SFIA data, it falls from 18% of 6-year-olds to 12% of 17-year-olds, a retention problem the report links to early specialization and burnout.
Why are tennis and golf growing among kids?
Aspen credits new formats and technology: shorter rounds, night golf, simulators, tracer tech and social venues like Topgolf, plus tennis’s appeal as a social, lifelong sport. Eight in 10 tennis players plan to keep playing recreationally, per the USTA.
How many youth sports coaches are there in the U.S.?
SFIA data shows 6.9 million active coaches of kids 14 and under in 2025, down from 8.4 million in 2022. Coaches 55 and older make up 43% of that group.
Yours from the on-deck circle,
Gouda
