The Screen Is the New Field

How Sports Media Shapes Youth Participation, and Why the Next Generation of Sports Experiences Matters

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Sports participation rarely begins with a registration form. For many young people, it begins with a moment of exposure: a game on television, a highlight on a phone, an athlete they admire, a replay that makes a difficult play easier to understand, or a national-team performance that makes a sport feel larger than it did before. Media does not replace access to fields, coaches, schools, parents, local programs, and affordable leagues, but it often creates the first emotional connection that makes a child want to participate.

The relationship between media exposure and youth sports participation is not simple. Major events do not automatically create new athletes, and a televised championship does not solve issues of cost, transportation, coaching quality, school access, or local infrastructure. The Aspen Institute’s Project Play, one of the leading organizations studying youth sports participation, frames the issue around access to high-quality sport activity for all children and adolescents, regardless of zip code or ability.¹ That framing is important because media can inspire interest, but the real-world sports system determines whether that interest becomes participation.

Visibility still matters. When a sport becomes easier to watch, easier to understand, and easier to identify with, it becomes easier for young people to imagine themselves playing it. The rise of girls’ and women’s soccer in the United States is one of the clearest examples of this relationship. The 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup did not create girls’ soccer by itself, but it gave the sport a national media moment, visible role models, and a cultural breakthrough that helped accelerate the belief that soccer was a sport girls could play, follow, and lead.²

The sports media landscape has changed dramatically since that 1999 moment. Younger audiences are less likely to build fandom only through full-game broadcasts. They increasingly discover sports through highlights, social clips, personalities, creators, alternate broadcasts, video games, and on-demand mobile content.³ This does not mean young audiences do not care about sports. It means the path from awareness to fandom is different, more fragmented, and more dependent on digital experiences that can turn short moments of attention into deeper understanding.

This expert series argues that youth sports participation and sports media should no longer be treated as separate conversations. If the next generation first discovers sports through a screen, then the screen becomes part of the participation pipeline. The challenge for leagues, teams, broadcasters, schools, brands, communities, and technology companies is to create a better handoff from watching to understanding, from understanding to caring, and from caring to playing.

At Skyrim.ai, this is one of the reasons we are building Stadium OS. Stadium OS is a real-time spatial sports broadcast platform designed to capture the game in 3D, enable virtual cameras, support new replay experiences, and create a development platform for next-generation sports storytelling.⁴ Our belief is that changing the sports media experience is one of the most scalable ways to reach young audiences. If better media can help more young people see sports, understand sports, and connect with sports, then it can also help more young people participate in sports.

Media Is Part of the Participation Pipeline

Youth sports participation is often discussed as a local access problem, and in many ways it is. Kids need safe places to play, affordable programs, trained coaches, transportation, school support, and community infrastructure. Those realities should not be minimized. Project Play’s youth sports research emphasizes that sports and physical activity provide physical, mental, social, emotional, cognitive, and academic benefits, but those benefits depend on children having meaningful access to quality activity in the first place.¹

However, access alone does not explain why a child chooses one sport over another, why a young fan becomes emotionally attached to a team, or why a moment on a screen can become the beginning of a lifelong relationship with a sport. Before children participate, they often need to notice. Before they notice, the sport needs to be visible. Before they imagine themselves playing, they need to see the game in a way that feels exciting, understandable, and possible.

That is why media belongs in the participation conversation. Sports media is not only a rights business, a broadcast business, or an entertainment business. It is also a cultural engine that shapes which sports young people see, which athletes they admire, what skills they value, and whether they feel invited into the game. When the media experience is compelling, inclusive, and accessible, it can create the emotional spark that makes participation more likely.

The distinction matters because media should not be presented as a magic solution. A child may watch the World Cup and feel inspired, but that inspiration can disappear if there is no local program, no safe place to play, no affordable league, no coach, or no parent who knows how to help them begin. Media can open the door, but community infrastructure determines whether a child can walk through it.

The State of Youth Sports: Recovery, Cost, and Uneven Access

The current youth sports landscape is not moving in one simple direction. According to Project Play’s State of Play 2025 report, youth sports participation has effectively recovered from the COVID-era disruption, with more children and adolescents engaging in organized play than at any time since 2019. The report cites federal data showing that 55.4% of youth ages 6 to 17 played sports in 2023, and it also notes that Sports & Fitness Industry Association data showed further gains in 2024.⁵

That recovery is encouraging, but it is not evenly distributed. The same Project Play report says the cost of youth sports has increased 46% since 2019 and that significant access gaps remain between children from higher-income and lower-income households.⁵ The Associated Press has also reported on the rising cost burden, citing Aspen Institute research that found many families struggle to afford participation costs, with the challenge especially severe for lower-income households.⁶

This uneven access is central to the media-and-participation conversation. Media can create demand, but if participation systems are expensive, over-specialized, or geographically limited, then demand will not convert into sustained play. A child who watches a sport and wants to try it needs a low-friction next step. That next step may be a school program, a recreation league, a community clinic, a park, a mini-field, or a local coach who makes the game feel welcoming.

The most productive way to understand media’s role is as the top of the participation funnel. Media creates awareness. Visibility creates aspiration. Role models create identity. Replays, storytelling, and explanation create understanding. Local access converts that interest into action. If any part of that chain breaks, participation suffers.

Why Visibility Matters

Visibility changes what feels possible. A sport that is rarely shown, poorly explained, or presented only through narrow cultural references becomes harder for young people to imagine as their own. A sport that is visible, emotionally engaging, and connected to relatable athletes becomes easier to identify with. This is especially important for children who are not already growing up inside a sports culture at home.

The role of visible role models is particularly important for girls and other underrepresented groups in sport. The Guardian, summarizing the “Here for Every Goal” report, described how the popularity of women’s football and the presence of visible role models can encourage girls’ participation, confidence, and social development.⁷ This aligns with the larger argument of this report: media does not simply show the sport; it helps define who the sport appears to be for.

A child does not need to see a perfect version of themselves on screen to participate, but representation can lower the emotional barrier to entry. When young people see athletes who feel relatable, they are more likely to believe that the sport has room for them. When they see the sport explained in ways they understand, they are more likely to keep watching. When they keep watching, they are more likely to develop the familiarity and confidence that can lead to participation.

This is why the quality of sports media matters. A highlight can create excitement, but context creates understanding. A viral clip can create attention, but storytelling creates connection. A championship can create a national moment, but repeated access creates familiarity. The goal should not be to replace live games with fragments, but to use every media format as part of a larger path into the sport.

Soccer as the Case Study

Soccer provides one of the clearest examples of how visibility, national-team success, professional infrastructure, and youth participation interact. The sport is global, relatively easy for children to begin playing, and highly dependent on both local community infrastructure and major media moments. It is also a sport where the United States has experienced different participation and visibility dynamics across the women’s and men’s game.

The U.S. Women’s National Team provides the strongest case study. The growth of girls’ and women’s soccer in the United States was built over decades through Title IX, school programs, college pathways, youth clubs, Olympic success, World Cup success, and national-team visibility. The 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup did not create that system by itself, but it gave the system a powerful cultural moment. The final was played in front of a sold-out Rose Bowl crowd of more than 90,000 people, with roughly 40 million more watching on ABC, and The New Yorker described it as a seminal moment in women’s sports.²

That visibility mattered because it made women’s soccer feel nationally important. The athletes became household names. The images became iconic. The sport became easier for girls to see, easier for families to understand, and easier for schools and communities to support. TIME, citing NFHS data, reported that girls’ high school soccer participation jumped 45% after 1999.⁸ That statistic should be used carefully, because participation growth also reflected years of structural investment, but it remains one of the strongest data points connecting a major media moment to measurable participation growth.

The better lesson from 1999 is not that one tournament automatically creates a generation of players. The better lesson is that visibility can accelerate belief when participation infrastructure already exists. The World Cup gave young girls visible proof that soccer was not only something they could play, but something they could lead, win, and define at the highest level. The media moment gave shape to an aspiration that schools, clubs, families, and communities could then help turn into participation.

The men’s soccer story is different, and that difference matters. The 1994 FIFA World Cup in the United States should not be framed as a failed participation moment or as an example of poor U.S. Men’s National Team performance causing a decline in youth male soccer. The tournament was broadly successful, the U.S. reached the knockout round, and the event helped lay the foundation for Major League Soccer and the modern U.S. soccer ecosystem.⁹ The more accurate lesson is that major events create windows of opportunity, but the long-term impact depends on the infrastructure built around them.

That is the key point for 2026. The question is not whether the World Cup will create attention. It will. The question is whether the sports industry, community organizations, schools, leagues, media companies, and technology platforms can convert that attention into sustained interest and participation.

The 2026 World Cup as a Participation Window

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is now beginning across North America. The tournament is co-hosted by Mexico, the United States, and Canada, runs from June 11 to July 19, 2026, and has expanded to 48 teams.¹⁰ The Associated Press has described it as a supersized tournament with 104 matches across the three host countries.¹¹ For the United States, this is the first men’s World Cup hosted on American soil since 1994, and it arrives at a very different moment in the country’s soccer development.

The opportunity is significant because soccer interest across North America is already rising. Reuters reported on a Nielsen study showing that North America’s soccer fan base grew 10.9% over the past five years to more than 136 million people, with the United States now described as having the fourth-largest soccer fan base globally. The same report said that 64% of surveyed fans expect their interest in soccer to grow further, nearly a quarter of fans have taken up soccer in the past five years, and 72% of North American fans watch through television or streamed content, with social media serving as a key secondary platform.¹²

Those numbers make the 2026 World Cup more than a broadcast event. It is a participation window. It gives North America a rare chance to connect global attention with local opportunity. If a child watches a match, follows a player, sees a replay, or shares a highlight, the next question should be whether there is a simple pathway to learn more, play locally, join a program, or experience the sport in a way that feels personal.

U.S. Soccer is already framing the tournament legacy around grassroots growth. The Associated Press reported that U.S. Soccer’s Soccer Forward initiative is designed to expand soccer access in schools and communities, support mini-fields, provide resources for coaches, and grow the game at the grassroots level.¹³ That is exactly the type of participation infrastructure that can convert media attention into action.

The sports media industry should think the same way. A World Cup broadcast can create awareness, but the full opportunity is larger. The moment should be used to build digital pathways that explain the sport, personalize the experience, celebrate diverse role models, connect fans to local play, and make young people feel closer to the game. If 2026 is treated only as a rights and sponsorship event, much of its youth impact may fade. If it is treated as a bridge between global visibility and local participation, it can become part of a much larger sports development story.

The Modern Sports Media Problem

The traditional sports broadcast was built for a different era of attention. It assumed that the viewer would sit down, watch the full game, follow the director’s camera choices, absorb the commentary, and gradually learn the sport through repeated exposure. That model still matters, and full-game broadcasts will remain essential to live sports. However, younger audiences increasingly enter sports through smaller fragments: highlights, clips, creator commentary, alternate broadcasts, athlete personalities, fantasy sports, gaming, social feeds, and short-form explainers.

This shift is not theoretical. TIME’s profile of Overtime describes how Gen Z and younger millennial audiences were less interested in watching entire basketball games on television and more interested in highlights, personalities, and on-demand mobile content while scrolling on their phones.³ The Financial Times, citing PwC research, similarly reported that only 19% of younger fans say they watch an entire game when they tune in at home, and that many consume social media highlights rather than complete broadcasts.¹⁴

This does not mean younger audiences are lost. It means they are entering the sports ecosystem through different doors. A young fan may first encounter a sport through a highlight rather than a full broadcast, through a player rather than a team, through a creator rather than a commentator, or through a video game rather than a live event. That is not necessarily a weakness. It can be an enormous advantage if the industry designs the next step correctly.

The problem is that many digital sports experiences stop at the highlight. The clip creates attention, but it does not always create understanding. The replay shows the result, but it does not always explain the decision-making, spacing, skill, or physical movement that made the moment possible. The social post creates awareness, but it does not always connect the viewer to the full game, the team, the local community, or the opportunity to play.

The industry challenge is to turn short-form discovery into long-form meaning. A highlight should not be the end of the experience. It should be a gateway into context, understanding, player identity, team loyalty, and participation. For a young fan, the most valuable media experience may be the one that helps them understand why the play mattered, how the athlete did it, what skill was involved, and how they might try something similar themselves.

From Passive Viewing to Participatory Media

The next generation of sports media should not be defined only by higher resolution, more cameras, or faster streaming. Those improvements matter, but the larger shift is from passive viewing to participatory understanding. A young fan should be able to move through a play, see it from different perspectives, follow the athlete they care about, understand the decision-making behind the moment, and share the version of the experience that matters to them.

This is where spatial media, volumetric capture, virtual cameras, real-time data, and personalized replay can become more than production tools. They can become educational tools, fan engagement tools, and participation tools. When a young viewer can see a play from the defender’s perspective, rotate around a key moment, understand spacing, follow the ball, or watch an athlete’s movement in context, the sport becomes more legible. When the sport becomes more legible, it becomes more inviting.

This matters because many children see the outcome of a play without understanding the movement that created it. They see the goal, the dunk, the touchdown, the save, or the finish, but they may miss the spacing, timing, anticipation, and decision-making that made the moment possible. A better media platform can help turn spectatorship into learning, and learning is one of the bridges between watching and playing.

The screen should not be treated as the enemy of physical participation. The wrong kind of screen experience can be passive, shallow, and disconnected from real-world play. The right kind of screen experience can be explanatory, social, personal, and motivating. It can make the game easier to understand and make participation feel more accessible.

Why Stadium OS Fits This Moment

Stadium OS is being built for this shift in sports media. Skyrim.ai describes Stadium OS as a real-time spatial sports broadcast platform that captures every moment of the game in real-time 3D and gives broadcasters creative freedom through virtual cameras, new replay capabilities, and an open development platform for next-generation sports storytelling.⁴ This matters because the future of sports engagement will require more than a single linear broadcast feed.

The platform is not only about creating new angles for production teams. It is about enabling a new relationship between the fan and the game. A virtual replay can help a broadcaster tell a better story, but it can also help a young viewer understand a play for the first time. A spatial capture system can support advanced analytics, but it can also make the game feel more accessible to someone who is still learning. An open development platform can support new tools for leagues, teams, broadcasters, and partners who want to create more personal, immersive, and educational sports experiences.

Stadium OS also fits the way younger audiences already engage with media. They expect control, personalization, interactivity, shareability, and context on demand. They do not necessarily reject full games, but they often need better entry points into the full game. Stadium OS is designed to help create those entry points by making the game more dynamic, more explorable, and more adaptable to different forms of storytelling.¹⁵

This is where Skyrim.ai’s work connects to the larger youth participation conversation. We are not claiming that technology alone will solve the youth sports participation challenge. It will not. Kids still need fields, courts, gyms, clubs, schools, coaches, transportation, safety, affordability, and local support. But before many children ever step onto a field, they need a reason to care. Media can help create that reason, and better media can make that reason stronger.

The Strategic Argument

The sports industry often separates participation from media. One side focuses on rights, broadcasts, distribution, platforms, sponsors, and audiences. The other focuses on schools, youth leagues, coaching, public facilities, and community access. For the next generation, those worlds are connected.

A young person may first discover a sport through a highlight. They may first admire an athlete through a social clip. They may first understand a tactical idea through a replay. They may first feel close to a team through an interactive digital experience. They may first imagine themselves playing because a screen made the sport feel visible, exciting, and possible.

That does not mean screen time is the solution to youth sports participation. It means the right kind of screen experience can become a path back to the field. The sports industry should stop treating digital media and physical participation as opposing forces and start designing media experiences that create a better handoff from watching to learning, from learning to caring, and from caring to playing.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup gives North America a historic opportunity to test this idea at scale. The event will bring attention, but the long-term impact will depend on what the industry does with that attention. The goal should not be only to maximize viewership during the tournament. The larger goal should be to help young people discover the sport in a way that continues after the final whistle.

Summary

The future of youth sports will not be built by media alone, but media will shape who notices, who cares, and who feels invited to participate. The next generation is already discovering sports differently, and the sports industry needs to meet that generation where it is without abandoning the depth, emotion, and community that make sports matter.

At Skyrim.ai, one of the things we are focused on is using our technology to help reach more young people. We believe that changing the media landscape is one of the best ways to help more kids see sports, understand sports, connect with sports, and ultimately participate in sports. Stadium OS is part of that effort. It is being built for the next generation of sports storytelling, but the larger ambition is to help create the next generation of sports fans and, hopefully, the next generation of sports participants.

The screen is not the enemy of the field. Used the right way, it can be one of the most powerful paths back to it.

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Footnotes

1. Aspen Institute Project Play, “Youth Sports Facts: Why Youth Sports Matter.” Project Play states that all children and adolescents, regardless of zip code or ability, should have access to high-quality sport activity, and summarizes the physical, mental, social, emotional, cognitive, and academic benefits of youth sports and physical activity. (Project Play)²

2. Caitlin Kelly, “The Summer That Changed Women’s Soccer,” The New Yorker, August 20, 2013. The article describes the 1999 Women’s World Cup final as a seminal moment in women’s sports, played before a sold-out Rose Bowl crowd of more than 90,000 people with roughly 40 million more watching on ABC. (The New Yorker) ²

3. Sean Gregory, “Overtime,” TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2024, TIME, May 30, 2024. TIME describes the shift among Gen Z and younger millennial sports audiences toward highlights, personalities, on-demand mobile content, and social media sports consumption. (Time) ²

4. Skyrim.ai, “Stadium OS.” The page describes Stadium OS as a real-time spatial sports broadcast platform that captures every moment of the game in real-time 3D and supports virtual cameras, replay capabilities, and an open development platform for next-generation sports storytelling. (Skyrim.AI) ²

5. Aspen Institute Project Play, “State of Play 2025: Our Annual Report on Trends in Youth Sports.” The report says youth sports participation has effectively recovered from the pandemic, cites federal data showing 55.4% of youth ages 6 to 17 played sports in 2023, notes additional 2024 gains in SFIA data, and reports that youth sports costs rose 46% since 2019. (Project Play) ²

6. Aaron Beard, “Rising costs for youth sports represents a challenge for families in keeping children active,” Associated Press, 2024. The article reports on rising youth sports costs and cites Aspen Institute research showing that 49% of respondents struggled to afford participation costs, including 57% of respondents with household income below $40,000. (AP News) 

7. “Team sports help vast majority of young girls feel more confident, says report,” The Guardian, March 7, 2024. The article summarizes the “Here for Every Goal” report and discusses the importance of visible role models in encouraging girls’ participation in football. (The Guardian)

8. Sean Gregory, “Avenging Abby Wambach,” TIME, December 22, 2014. TIME reports that girls’ high school soccer participation jumped 45% after 1999, citing the National Federation of State High School Associations. (Time)

9. “Lamar Hunt’s legacy: World Cup adventures with sons Clark and Dan, and the foundation of US soccer,” Associated Press, 2026; and “How the 1994 FIFA World Cup put the United States on track to host all over again in 2026,” FourFourTwo, 2026. These sources support the historical framing that the 1994 World Cup helped lay the foundation for Major League Soccer and the modern U.S. soccer ecosystem. (AP News)

10. “World Cup 2026: teams qualified, key players and fixtures,” Reuters, June 11, 2026. Reuters reports that the 2026 FIFA World Cup is co-hosted by Mexico, the United States, and Canada, runs from June 11 to July 19, and features an expanded 48-team format. (Reuters)

11. “World Cup what to know: Mexico kicks off a supersized, 48-team tournament,” Associated Press, June 11, 2026. AP reports that the 2026 FIFA World Cup includes 48 teams and 104 matches across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. (AP News)

12. “Interest climbs for soccer across North America before 2026 World Cup, study shows,” Reuters, June 9, 2026. Reuters reports Nielsen findings that North America’s soccer fan base grew 10.9% over five years to more than 136 million people, that the U.S. has 62.5 million soccer followers, that 64% of surveyed fans expect their interest to grow, that nearly a quarter of fans have taken up soccer in the past five years, and that 72% of North American fans watch through television or streaming. (Reuters)

13. Anne M. Peterson, “US Soccer has bold plans for the World Cup legacy,” Associated Press, 2026. The article reports on U.S. Soccer’s Soccer Forward initiative, including expanded school and community soccer programs, mini-fields, grassroots resources, and coaching support. (AP News)

14. “Baseball is learning to live with shorter attention spans,” Financial Times, May 2026. The article cites PwC research saying only 19% of younger fans report watching an entire game when tuning in at home and that many younger fans consume social media highlights rather than full broadcasts. (Financial Times)

15. Skyrim.ai, “Stadium OS.” The same source describes Stadium OS features including unlimited virtual replays, virtual camera controls, access to live 2D camera feeds and real-time 3D spatial data, 3D telestration, automated highlight generation, alternate broadcasts, analytics tools, and custom visual experiences.