‘You’re selected because of your wallet’: The cost of youth sports is out of control — especially in the Bay Area

Thirty-two years ago, the United States hosted the World Cup with a clear mandate: grow the game of soccer in America. A vast untapped market awaited.

This summer, the World Cup returns to North America, and it’s evident that the long-ago goal has been achieved. Soccer participation has exploded in this country; according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association there were 16.8 million participants in outdoor soccer last year. Soccer has moved to the third most popular sport in the United States, surpassing baseball, according to a poll conducted by the Economist.

Yes, soccer has grown. But how has it grown?

“Cancer is a growth, too,” said Eric Wynalda, a star forward on the 1994 U.S. soccer team and, these days, an outspoken critic of youth soccer in the United States.

“But it’s not healthy. And it could end up resulting in death.”

The youth soccer system is broken. Unlike government-funded programs in much of the rest of the world, ours has become a pay-to-play system that caters primarily to upper middle-class families and shuts out many, particularly in underserved communities.

“The business of soccer is booming, but, after all these years, the problem is still access,” said Colin Schmidt, the executive director of America SCORES, a free soccer program in the Bay Area that grew out of an endowment created by the ’94 World Cup. “There are just too many barriers and the cost to play club soccer is the biggest one.”

Soccer is one of the main drivers fueling a crisis in the cost of youth sports. According to a 2025 report from the Aspen Institute’s Project Play, the cost of playing youth sports rose an astonishing 46% between 2019 and 2026. The average American family now spends $1,016 a year on their child’s primary sport.

But in the Bay Area, parents can easily spend 10 to 15 times that number annually.

According to the Aspen Institute, youth sports is now a $40 billion business annually, a figure almost twice what the NFL generated in 2024. A survey done by the Kinetica Group shows that soccer accounts for the largest annual spending of any youth activity, at over $5.2 billion.

Though school and rec league opportunities exist, private clubs dominate the youth soccer landscape. Such clubs charge a membership fee, a team fee, a fee for uniforms, a fee to enter tournaments. Many clubs market their participation in “elite” tournaments, ones that demand cross-country travel and lodging, some with a “stay to play” policy that require booking in tournament-sponsored hotels. Parents often feel pressure to keep their child on a select development track and hire private trainers to work with their child outside of the club.

“It’s like the bullet train is leaving the station, at age 8,” Tom Farrey, the founder of Project Play, said on the Youth Inc. podcast, “and either put your kid on it or they’ll miss out on all the benefits of sport.”

Youth soccer is such a lucrative enterprise that private equity firms have entered the space. The attraction of youth sports to such financial groups is clear: Youth soccer has recurring, predictable revenue, with parents enrolling their children as young as 6 and potentially paying into the system for as long as a decade.

Private equity firms are buying clubs around the country, consolidating and streamlining operations, and buying ancillary infrastructure: tournaments, academies, facilities, uniform retailers, registration systems, video platforms. For example, Surf Soccer and Rush Soccer, which began as  single entities in San Diego and Colorado, respectively, now have clubs across the nation — and around the world — including several in Northern California. Both are owned by Pioneer Sports and Entertainment, a private equity firm based in Southern California. 

The pro sports model pushed by such consolidation means full-time coaches, full-time sporting directors and higher and higher costs.

“You’re not chosen because of your kid’s talent, you’re selected because of your wallet,” said Wynalda, a father of six who has seen the system from all sides, as player, coach and parent. “They want to see your tax returns.”

For parents, the carrot on the stick, the hoped-for return on that copious investment, is a long-shot chance at future success: a college scholarship or, even less realistic, a professional career.

The Project Play survey delved into that magical thinking, finding that 1 in 5 parents believe their child could play collegiate sports (reality says just 7% of high school athletes will play college sports and just 2% will play at the Division I level), and 1 in 10 believe their child could be a professional or an Olympian. (Odds set chances of a pro career at .00075%).

That long-shot chance at a scholarship has become even tougher in the rapidly shifting collegiate climate. Because soccer, like other college sports, has a transfer portal, coaches can sign a player from another school who scored 15 goals, as opposed to taking a risk on a 17-year-old high schooler. In addition, collegiate men’s soccer rosters are brimming with foreign players, who might not have been good enough to elevate through their country’s system but are good enough to play collegiate soccer in the United States.

Despite the scholarship odds growing even longer, that seems to have only primed the pump for parents who can pay.

“It’s the fear of missing out,” said Dan Chamberlain, the director of competitions at NorCal soccer, who has gone through the club experience with his own son. “They’re marketing fear. If you’re not in this program by age 12 then you’re going to miss out and never be a pro. Never mind that you’re not going to be a pro anyway.”

Wynalda said that fear and pressure can make parents more susceptible to “being lured into a trap.”

But the trap also has dire consequences for those not ensnared. Millions of children are being shut out of the system, unable to access the sports experience because of lack of affordability.

“We’re missing the mark,” said Robert Marcus, the chief strategy and impact officer for the Positive Coaching Alliance. “We’ve created a system that isn’t in service of all kids.

“We’re creating inequity across the system. Sports is a community-building tool. But statistics show that the cost barriers exclude 60% of families from participation.”

And cost isn’t the only barrier. Many children, with two working parents, don’t have the ability to get to and from three-days-a-week soccer practice plus weekend games. Field access and field safety are also issues in disadvantaged communities.

And kids are shut out of more than just kicking a ball.

“The teamwork, the life skills, the social skills, the problem solving,” said Lamont Robinson, assistant commissioner of the Oakland Athletic League. “All of those things that sports provide. But many folks in our city can’t afford the system.”

Soaring costs are part of almost all youth sports. But soccer was particularly ripe for the monetized model, because there was very little infrastructure to support the rapid growth that occurred after both the 1994 World Cup and the 1999 Women’s World Cup.

Most of the players on the American rosters in those landmark tournaments came out of AYSO, a volunteer-run organization that required every player gets the chance to play

“AYSO was ‘everybody plays,’” said Wynalda. “Now it’s everybody pays.”

Many of the leaders in the budding U.S. youth soccer movement of the 1990s came from the European model of community soccer clubs, funded by local governments. Because of that European model, soccer development was less tied to the American tradition of school sports.

“In some ways soccer has led the way on this marketplace that’s been created,” Chamberlain said. “The United States model is scholastic sports, but soccer is the outlier because we’ve tried to copy the international space.”

In the past 10 to 15 years, new layers of leagues have emerged, such as Elite Clubs National League (ECNL) and MLS Next, which is operated by Major League Soccer, a jumble of acronyms that is confusing to the consumer and hint at professional credibility. All promise an “elite” experience, national competition and the ability to get players in front of college coaches.

“It’s all driven from the top down,” said youth soccer coach Simon Ireland, who quit coaching club soccer, frustrated by the pay-to-play model. “I call it faux pro. It’s all tied to imagery. But nothing real or tangible has changed about youth soccer except the cost.”

As costs have skyrocketed, many have worked hard to find solutions.

One effort is Oakland Genesis, founded by Cody Pillon and Matt Fondy, who both grew up playing club soccer in the Bay Area and met playing for UC Santa Cruz, where Chamberlain was their coach. Frustrated by what they found in the youth soccer world after graduation, Fondy and Pillon launched a free after-school program that has since grown to include an educational platform in addition to the soccer academy. It now features 12 academy teams serving 300 students and nine middle school programs with an enrollment of about 400.

A 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Oakland Genesis relies on grants and funding from a variety of sources, including some through Oakland Unified School District, with whom they also partner with for field and classroom space. Stephen and Ayesha Curry’s foundation Eat. Learn. Play. — which emphasizes reaching kids where they already are, which is at their schools — is one of their partners.

“I joined their board with the express belief that this is a model that could work in a lot of places, and frankly should be a model replicated in other places,” said Chamberlain.

Schmidt’s America SCORES program is also meeting children where they are, putting in several fields at schools under their “asphalt-to-turf” program. 

“It’s another way to bust down a barrier,” Schmidt said. “If they can’t get to the field, we’re gonna bring the field to them.”

Just as the 1994 World Cup did in the last century, this World Cup presents an opportunity. Project Play’s Farrey calls the 2026 World Cup — and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics — “mega-events” that can help reshape the youth sports ecosystem and deliver a new kind of legacy.

Like the tournament 32 years ago, the 2026 World Cup also has a legacy initiative, Soccer Forward, U.S. soccer’s legacy and social impact arm. The aim is to address some of the strange ways the sport has grown since the last World Cup.

The mission statement calls for expanding access to the game, “so that its benefits will touch everyone in every corner of the U.S.”

“There’s a certain kind of soccer that we want to grow, a fun version of soccer, an affordable version of soccer,” said Nora Dooley, Soccer Forward’s director of impact programs. “One that’s inclusive, accessible and youth-centered.”

Part of the initiative is to recognize and support community-based organizations, like Oakland Genesis, that are already doing the work.

“And to make sure they’re recognized as part of the federation,” Dooley said. “Because we have this membership, the pro leagues and club teams, that pay into the system. So how can we cast a wider net over what soccer is?

“We want to grow the game in a really authentic way that means something to communities and has their needs at the center of it.”

The World Cup fueled a boom in youth soccer in this country. Can another World Cup help solve the problems that the last one created?