Sport Participation Heat Maps

We know that football, soccer, basketball and baseball participation among children varies throughout the U.S. For the first time, the Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative has sought to quantify this by examining participation rates of four of the most popular sports for every U.S. community. Project Play partnered with Kinetica, which applies predictive models to census and its own survey data to model detailed sports and recreation participation data down to the hyperlocal level. Kinetica uses the data in partnerships with national sports organizations in the U.S. and Australia like the U.S. Tennis Association.

The models create unique datasets to understand sport and recreation behavior, interest and engagement across 84,000 small local areas (census tracts) in the U.S. Sports organizations can identify program gaps and opportunities. Local leaders and advocates can identify sites for potential facilities. Grantmakers can sharpen their investment strategies. Researchers can analyze certain communities. All of this and more can happen by looking local.

Football participation

Analysis: Football participation has a broad geographic reach and only the middle part of the U.S. has consistently lower levels of participation. Football participation rates among kids are lower overall than for sports like basketball and soccer. But tackle football reaches into most areas of the country and there is less variation between the highest and lowest areas relative to other sports. Some parts of the U.S. that under-index are less populated areas in the West, Kentucky and pockets of the Northeast.

Sports participation varies even across cities. The localized sport and recreation data enables us to zoom-in to any community and get a detailed understanding of the sport, recreation, and wellbeing profile of the area. Project Play recently utilized the dataset for the State of Play Baton Rouge report. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has significant demographic differences, with the North having significantly lower incomes and a higher percentage of Black youth. The Baton Rouge maps on this page examine how the participation rates for the four leading sports among children vary by small areas within the Baton Rouge area, and how the demographic differences play out.

Baton Rouge Zoom-in

Analysis: Football participation has relatively good reach into multiple areas across Baton Rouge, reflecting its broad reach nationally. The pockets in Baton Rouge that have lower relative participation have very high proportions of lower-income households and percentages of children who are Black. These pockets have relatively lower levels of participation across most sports and recreation activities.

Soccer participation

Analysis: Soccer participation has a broad geographic reach, over-indexing in highly populated areas on the East Coast, West Coast and portions of the Southeast. Relatively lower rates are seen in some areas such as Montana, Nebraska, Mississippi and Alabama. Some of this footprint for soccer is explained by the concentration of Latino/Hispanic residents, along with higher relative incomes in some areas.

Baton Rouge Zoom-In

Analysis: Soccer reaches into pockets of North Baton Rouge, but there’s more participation in South Baton Rouge, where income is higher. Some of the strongest participation rates in Baton Rouge are in communities where average household incomes exceed $200,000 per year. This reflects the bias in the participation base of soccer players toward higher incomes.

Basketball participation

Analysis: Basketball’s strongest participation rates are in major urban areas and large areas of the middle to eastern portion of the U.S. The rates are relatively strong for most parts of the country but are higher than the national average across the eastern half of the U.S. and California, particularly in metro areas, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic areas. Rates are relatively lower in less urban areas in the West and the Mid-East belt.

Baton Rouge Zoom-In

Analysis: Basketball participation has good reach into multiple areas across Baton Rouge, reflecting the community’s higher percentage of Black children and the bias toward urban areas within the basketball participation base. Overall basketball participation rates are higher in North Baton Rouge, where the percentage of Black residents is 61% compared to 33% in South Baton Rouge.

Baseball participation

Analysis: Baseball participation is strong across the North, California, South Florida and into Texas, and relatively lower in the South. Baseball has a stronghold in the Midwest, with other relatively strong areas along the Pacific Coast and Northeast. There’s also reach into less populous areas of the West. However, the Southeast portion of the U.S. under-indexes in terms of expected participation rates with the exception of some baseball hotbeds such as South Florida and Atlanta. The sourced data captures children who play baseball at any competitive level, from one play occasion to travel ball.

Baton Rouge Zoom-In

Analysis: Baseball participation is consistently less in the lower-income areas of North Baton Rouge vs. the higher-income neighborhoods in the South with more White residents. Overall, the participation rate for baseball is lower for Baton Rouge than in other parts of the U.S.