With the Super Bowl in Santa Clara just days away, the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots are set to face off on the sport’s biggest stage.

A headline-grabbing halftime show and a West Coast venue are once again putting the game in position to deliver massive audiences and cultural impact. In the short term, football’s momentum looks as strong as ever.

But with the short term seemingly assured, we thought we’d look a little further into the future of football to find out about the sport’s medium-term health. So, we asked young Americans (15-25 years old) about their experience of and attitude towards football, as well as other popular sports, to find out more.

Despite its status as America’s game, football isn’t the sport that most young Americans have ever tried – that honor falls to basketball. More than two-fifths of 15-25-year-olds (43%) have played basketball, compared to just 29% who have ever tried football. Soccer also pips football, with 30% of young Americans having ever tried it. Another sport with a high-profile major-league version, baseball comes in fifth (23%). Overall, the data is clear – young Americans have good opportunities to try a range of sports. But which sports do they continue to play after trying?

Well, the same top three ranking applies to the sports which young Americans currently play. Basketball is the most popular (21%) followed by soccer (12%), then football (11%). Volleyball and boxing round out the top five of sports currently played by young Americans. Baseball drops out the top five when it comes to sports currently played – just 6% of young Americans are doing so. In terms of efficiency at converting ‘triers’ into current players, basketball is the most efficient, followed by soccer, with football third.

These retention rates reflect a mix of accessibility, infrastructure, and opportunity. Some sports are easier to play casually, while others rely on organized systems that tend to concentrate resources on elite pathways rather than broad participation. Opportunities also differ by gender, with fewer entry points and progression routes for girls in some sports, meaning overall participation figures can hide very different realities beneath the surface.

We also asked young people what sports they are curious about in the future. Here, football ties with basketball (29%), putting the two sports well above their competitors – soccer is on 18%, with a host of other sports including baseball, volleyball, boxing and martial arts in the high teens. So while more people continue to play basketball than football, this data suggests it’s not because they’ve lost interest in the sport. On the contrary.

But how does all this translate into fandom? Does trying a sport (or continuing to play it) mean you are more likely to be a fan?

We asked our young Americans about their fandom – and this is where we see something really interesting. Two sports surge ahead with almost half of this group considering themselves fans of the basketball (45%) and more than two in five fans of football.

While football doesn’t convert as many ‘tryers’ into ‘players’ – and in fact doesn’t attempt to when it comes to the traditional version of the game – it is highly effective at generating fandom despite that. In fact, football and basketball have a higher proportion of fans than ‘triers’, indicating their broad appeal.

All this points to a rosy future for the game, whatever the Super Bowl holds this Sunday. Efforts by the League to extend its offer and better engage with younger fans are working (helped along, no doubt, by a certain football/music romance). Meanwhile, the presence of flag football at LA28 and a recent agreement to invest $32mn in an adult flag football league are likely to boost playing opportunities in this more accessible version of the sport.

For all the recent chat around the growth of, for example, F1 among younger people, it’s still football and basketball who are there in the top spots.

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