As youth sports booms, churches compete for American families' Sundays
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America's youth sports boom is quietly rewriting Sunday mornings, turning the family calendar into a competition between the pews and the playing fields.
Key facts
- Among parents of children ages 5-17, Sunday religious participation fell from 26.8% in 2003-07 to 16.7% in 2021-24, an Axios analysis of American Time Use Survey data found
- The average sports parent spends 3 hours, 23 minutes every day their child has a practice or game, including driving, attending activities, washing uniforms, preparing meals and communicating
- What they're saying: Tim Morey, lead pastor at Life Covenant Church in Torrance, Calif. that sports don't necessarily sever families from church, but they make attendance "more spotty" at times
- America's youth sports boom is quietly rewriting Sunday mornings, turning the family calendar into a competition between the pews and the playing fields
Summary
For generations, churches helped organize American family life around a shared weekly ritual. The U.S. has undergone one of its fastest religious shifts in modern history, marked by a rapid increase in the religiously unaffiliated and in church closures. As it's boomed into a multi-billion-dollar industry, more games are moving to Sundays, something less common a generation ago. "The idea of missing church for sports is assumed," Linda Flanagan, author of " Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids' Sports, and Why It Matters," tells Axios.