Youth Baseball Participation Rising in the United States

Bruce A. Willey is an Iowa-based tax strategist and Certified Public Accountant who operates his own firm and serves as a consultant to business owners. Outside of his work, Bruce A. Willey enjoys coaching youth baseball in his home state of Iowa.

Youth baseball registration and other team sports in the United States began declining with the recession in 2009. However, a recent report by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) says that baseball combined with softball had the largest participant base in 2016. 

The SFIA report included data from 25,000 interviews in which respondents were asked about participation in more than 100 different physical activities. Results showed drastic increases in casual and core participation in baseball.

Casual participation in baseball increased 18.1 percent from 2015 to 2016 and showed an average annual growth of 6.5 percent since 2011. Core participation, which the SFIA defines as playing more than 13 times in a calendar year, showed a similar but less dramatic increase. The trend is attributed in part to Major League Baseball's Play Ball initiative, which was launched in 2015 with the goal of inspiring children to play baseball.