The Real Cost of Youth Sports — and Why Getting Recruited Shouldn't Add to It

Ask any parent with a kid in club sports and you'll get the same weary look. The fees. The travel. The tournaments. The gear. And then, right when your athlete is good enough to think about playing in college, a whole new industry shows up with its hand out: recruiting services.

Let's talk honestly about what this costs — and what it doesn't have to.

What the research actually found

A peer-reviewed 2025 study out of Ohio University examined the pay-to-play model in American youth soccer. The findings put hard numbers on what families already feel:

• The average family spends roughly $883 per child, per year on participation — travel, membership fees, and equipment.
• Travel costs alone rose about 19% compared to before the pandemic.
• These costs disproportionately price out talented kids from lower-income families, which shrinks the overall talent pool and makes the whole system less competitive and less fair.

The researchers were direct about the consequence: when access depends on what a family can pay, plenty of gifted athletes simply never get the chance — and the sport is weaker for it.

And remember: that $883 figure is just to participate. It doesn't include the cost of trying to get recruited.

Where the recruiting industry piles on

Here's the part that frustrates me most, as someone who spent 13+ years coaching youth sports.

Once a family has already stretched their budget to keep their kid playing, the recruiting-service industry arrives with:

• Annual fees that commonly run from hundreds to thousands of dollars.
• Locked contracts you can't easily get out of.
• The genuinely useful tools buried behind sales calls and consultations.
• "Premium exposure packages" and endless upsells that prey on a parent's very natural fear of their kid being overlooked.

It's a system designed to make you feel like spending more is the only way to protect your child's future. It isn't.

The truth about getting seen

Getting recruited is not, fundamentally, about who spends the most money. It's about being findable and evaluable. A coach needs to be able to:

1. Find your athlete.
2. Watch their film.
3. See their stats and academics.
4. Get in touch.

That's it. Everything else the industry sells you is packaging around those four things — often at an outrageous markup. For a full walkthrough of how that process actually plays out, see our flag football recruiting guide.

What we decided to do differently

I built Athletic Universe because I got tired of watching families get squeezed. The idea was simple: give every athlete the four things that actually matter — a real profile, a home for their film, their stats and academics, and a way for coaches to reach them — without the exploitative pricing.

So the whole price is $15/month. No contracts. No upsells. No exposure packages. You can cancel anytime.

We can't fix every cost in youth sports. Club fees, travel, and tournaments are real, and they're not going away. But being seen by college coaches? That's one cost we can take off your plate — or at least shrink it from thousands of dollars to fifteen bucks.

Because a kid's shot at playing in college shouldn't come down to what their family can afford.

Athletic Universe is an affordable, transparent recruiting platform built for athletes, parents, and coaches. Learn more at athleticuniverse.com or follow @athleticuniverseapp.

Source: Ndubuokwu, P.C. & Oluwalose, M. (2025). "Eradicating the pay-to-play system in American youth soccer." World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 25(3), 068-085.