UNITED STATES
Capital: Washington, D.C. | Population: 331 million
Lead body for sport development: U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee
| Government Support | D |
| Elite Sport Rank | 1 |
| Elite Sport Rank Per Capita | 40 |
| Youth Sport Participation Grade | C |
As with most countries the Aspen Institute studied, the bedrock of the United States sport system is community programs and clubs, locally organized and often run by volunteers or paid staff. Unlike in most countries, schools also offer a menu of sport teams, mostly for students who are teenagers. But beyond state high school athletics federations that oversee interscholastic competition, there isn’t much governance of youth sports.
Most state boards of education take a hands-off approach to school sports. No state government has the equivalent of Department of Sports and Recreation, unlike Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory that has used its sports agency to register youth-serving organizations, conduct background checks, and support communities with facilities grants. Rare are local government bodies like the Fairfax County (Virginia) Athletic Council, an advisory board with sport, city, school, and parks and rec representatives that sorts through field use policies and other thorny issues. It’s a chaotic, if dynamic, environment that often leaves providers frustrated, and parents with little assurance of program quality.
The 1978 Amateur Sports Act, the nation’s first attempt at sport governance, is increasingly and widely recognized as flawed legislation. But six years earlier, lawmakers got policy right in a big way with Title IX, a statement of non-discrimination that vastly expanded sport opportunities for females in schools and ultimately reshaped the entire sport ecosystem, at home and around the world. Most U.S. Olympic medals are now won by women, and teams that other countries send to events like the Olympics and soccer World Cup are often populated with athletes trained on U.S. college campuses. Another federal law, the Land and Water Conservation Act of 1964, allocated funds from Gulf of Mexico oil leases that has helped states, counties and cities build more than 45,000 sports and recreational spaces.
The federal government’s first attempt at sport governance was in 1978, with the Amateur Sports Act. Rather than create an agency or quasi-government body dedicated to mass sport participation like other countries have, Congress outsourced the job to the U.S. Olympic Committee (now the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee) which was tasked with establishing national goals for amateur sport activities and overseeing the now 50-plus National Governing Bodies charged with coordinating amateur sport activities down the youth level.
But it was an unfunded mandate, and starting in the 1990s the USOPC began telling Congress it couldn’t get Americans off the couch while also getting American athletes onto the Olympic podium. That’s still the case today. The USOPC distributes more than $100 million a year to NGBs, the vast majority for the training of high-performance athletes. Congressional oversight has been inconsistent at best, confined to occasional hearings flowing from various scandals.
Federal agencies make contributions. The U.S. Census Bureau collects data on sport participation, and an inter-agency group set a goal of 63% sport participation by the year 2030. In 2019 the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services created a National Youth Sports Strategy. The President’s Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition promotes physical fitness. All lack the authority or budget to shift behavior in the sport ecosystem, relying mostly on one-off opportunities like supportive White House policy.