6. Market Analysis

6.1 Industry An estimated 25 million children age six through eighteen participate in one or more school or community based athletic program. This number is on the rise as the average age of children entering such programs has dropped. In order to supervise, teach and manage these athletes, approximately 2.5 million coaches spend an average of 80 hours per season with them. The majority of coaches volunteer for programs organized by community bodies, religious organizations and recreational facilities. Most are adults who leave coaching as soon as their children lose interest or eligibility for continued sports competition. Without a national agency to coordinate sports programs, there exists great variation in the manner in which sponsoring agencies organize teams. Overall, though, youth athletics have moved from relatively unstructured to highly organized over the past two decades. Youth athletics may be conveniently divided into six categories of youth sports programs, including: * Agency-sponsored programs * National youth service organizations * Club sports * Recreation programs * Intramural programs * Interscholastic programs Of these six categories, the first four are community-based and the last two are conducted through educational facilities. Since a high percentage of children participate in more than one sport, total annual participants number approximately 52 million. Of these, 63 percent are boys, and 37 percent are girls. In the past decade, participation has grown robustly among children from five to twelve years in age, but decreased slightly for children from thirteen to seventeen years old. Despite the latter trend, the overall number of participants