As the elite levels of youth sports become increasingly competitive and demanding, the mental health and resilience of young athletes has emerged as a critical issue. The intense pressure to perform from coaches, parents, and themselves can take a significant toll, leading to burnout, anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges at an early age. While professional and college sports have started putting more resources into sports psychology and mental training, there remains a massive unmet need at the youth level across major sports like soccer, football, volleyball, baseball, and lacrosse.
The Impact on Young Athletes
The statistics around mental health issues in youth sports are sobering. A survey by the National Alliance for Youth Sports found that roughly 70% of kids drop out of organized sports by the age of 13, with major reasons being that it stopped being fun and they felt too much pressure [1]. Athletes who specialize in one sport at an early age are at increased risk of overuse injuries, burnout, and dropping out entirely. The mental toll can be immense even at the high school level, with eating disorders, substance abuse, depression, and suicide ideation impacting athletes at higher rates.
The vast majority of young athletes, however, do not have access to the types of mental resilience training, sports psychology support, and coping strategies provided at elite levels. This puts them at risk and can shortchange their ability to develop mental skills and deal with adversity that ultimately impacts performance on the field as well.
Meeting Athletes Where They Are
While there is a growing field of mental health professionals specializing in sports psychology, making services accessible and affordable for the millions of youth athletes across the U.S. remains a hurdle. Young people are almost constantly connected to their mobile devices, however, creating an opportunity to deliver mental training content in bite-sized, engaging ways through apps.
At Evolve1, we deliver short video tutorials via our mobile app that provide young athletes with tools for building resilience, managing anxiety and stress, recovering from injuries, dealing with failures, and a host of other mental skills. Our “program in your pocket” approach covers science backed techniques like cognitive reframing, pre-performance routines, enhance coping skills and more - all atomized into quick segments that fit young people's media consumption habits.
Tracking mental performance metrics, goal setting and building a community of resilience within teams and their athletes is more important than ever. The Evolve1 mobile app helps provide necessary support and is more accessible and affordable for this vastly underserved market.
A Massive Market Opportunity
The total addressable market for youth athlete mental health and resilience training is staggering. There are over 60 million participants aged 6-18 across the major sports categories in the U.S. Based on average spend for specialized sports training, if even a small percentage paid $5 per month for an app providing mental skills training, the market potential is in the billions.
For example, if just 10% of youth athletes paid $5 monthly for a mental resilience app, that's a $3.6 billion annual opportunity. And those are just the direct app subscription revenues. Sponsors, academic institutions, national governing bodies, and other stakeholders could provide additional sources of revenue to support the holistic development of young athletes.
“The convergence of technology, science and humanity has become a growing and very important market for many investors”, says Anthony Bontrager, Managing Director of WestRiver Group. “Platforms that can truly unlock human potential, thereby improving how we live, work, compete and experience the world will be the winners in this exciting and impact-focused market.”
The Time is Now
Neglecting the mental health and resilience of young athletes creates issues that compound over time, leading to undue stress, injury risk, disengagement, and missed opportunities. As investments in youth sports continues to grow rapidly across communities, there is an obligation to provide well-rounded development encompassing physical and mental abilities. Evolve1 and our mobile application leverages succinct video tutorials, based on years of research, have the potential to fill this gap and bring essential resilience skills training to the millions who need it most.
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[1] National Alliance for Youth Sports, "Talking to Your Kids About Quitting Sports" https://www.nays.org/resources/leaders-corner/talking-to-your-kids-about-quitting-sports.cfm