How Much Does Travel Sports Cost? What the Surveys Say, and What a Weekend Adds Up To

The average American family spent $1,016 on one child's main sport in 2024, according to the Aspen Institute's Project Play survey. That is a 46% jump from 2019. It is also an average across all kinds of play, and travel teams sit well above it.

Here is what the national numbers say, where they stop being useful, and what one tournament weekend adds up to when you list every line.

What is the average cost of youth sports in the U.S.?

Project Play surveyed 1,848 parents of children ages 6 to 18 in November and December 2024. The headline figures:

The report says higher spending is driven by team registrations, "travel and lodging" for non-local play, and camps and private instruction. It does not give a dollar split for lodging alone.

Project Play's facts page on challenges lists travel as the biggest line item in an earlier version of its cost breakdown: $260 per sport per child on average, ahead of equipment ($154), private lessons ($183), registration ($168) and camps ($111). Families earning $150,000 or more spent 83% more on travel than families under $50,000. The page does not date that figure, so treat it as a ratio, not a current price.

Why does the national average understate travel sports?

Because most kids are not on travel teams. Project Play found that only 17% of children played their primary sport in travel or club leagues. Community teams (43%), free play (41%) and school teams (40%) were far more common. A family paying for hotels every other weekend is pulling the average up, and a family in a rec league is pulling it down.

Sport matters too. Spectrum News 13, reporting Project Play data, says hockey costs families more than $2,500 a year, with skiing, snowboarding and field hockey above $2,000. An older Utah State University survey of 2016 spending, reported by TIME, put average hockey spending at $7,013 a year, with a maximum of $19,000. Those two numbers come from different surveys with different samples, so do not subtract one from the other. The pattern is what matters: hockey is the costly end, and travel is where the dollars pile up.

How much does a travel team cost per season?

No national survey we found publishes a clean "travel team" price. What exists are estimates by level, and they come from commercial sites. Treat them as ranges to test against your own club's numbers.

Scout Elite's 2025-26 hockey cost guide estimates, per season, all-in:

Those are hockey numbers. Baseball, softball, volleyball and soccer travel teams have their own cost structures, so ask your club what last season actually cost per family, including tournaments. Our list of questions to ask before joining a travel team covers that.

What does one tournament weekend cost a family?

Here is the line-item view. The only itemized weekend budget with ranges we could find comes from Nickel City Hockey, a hockey blog. It models one player plus two parents. We are using it as an example, not a standard.

The author's own point is the useful one: the entry fee, "the number everyone argues about," is 6 to 9 percent of what a fly-in weekend actually costs a family. The hotel is the bigger line, and it is the one a tournament's housing rules can control.

Your weekend will differ. Hotel rates vary by city and date. Meals depend on whether you have a kitchen. Drive distance changes everything. That is why we built a trip cost calculator that shows every assumption and lets you change it.

How much of the weekend bill is the hotel?

Often the largest single line, and the one with the least room to shop. When a tournament requires a specific hotel block, you cannot compare rates the way you would for a normal trip.

Two sourced examples show the size of the gap:

• Oklahoma Watch reported in March 2025 that families at a Tulsa hockey tournament were quoted $127 per night at a Fairfield Inn, and "$28 went to the booking agent as a non-refundable deposit, 22% of the total lodging cost" (via TulsaKids).
• Our Kids Play Hockey describes, in an episode write-up, a family that found a regular rate of $426 for two nights, against a tournament-required rate of $710 for two nights.

Both are single examples, not averages. We do not know how common they are. For how those requirements work and what tournaments say about them, see stay-to-play rebates explained and our stay-to-play guide. Our own data report tracks which events publish a hotel rule.

The Sports Events & Tourism Association, as cited by Oklahoma Watch, says nearly 40% of tournament destinations had stay-to-play requirements in 2023, down from 60% in 2021.

Are families feeling the squeeze?

The polls say yes, with the usual caution about who commissions them.

• A 2026 Good Sports survey, run by The Harris Poll with more than 500 U.S. parents of children under 18, found that 68% of parents with kids in sports had seriously considered getting them out. 53% worried they could not afford sports next year, and 77% agreed that the growth of private clubs and travel teams is pricing many children out.
• A 2025 New York Life survey, as reported by CPA Practice Advisor, found 76% of parents took action to manage travel sports costs, and 25% pulled from savings or an emergency fund. The same article cites NCAA data that about 2% of high school athletes receive a college scholarship.

Good Sports and New York Life both have an interest in the topic. The numbers are still worth knowing, but they are opinion and self-report, not audited spending.

How do I budget for a season of tournaments?

A workable method, using your own numbers:

1. Ask the team manager for the tournament schedule and each event's entry fee. Divide by roster size.
2. For each event, price the hotel using the tournament's actual requirement. If there is a hotel block, use its rate, not a generic search result.
3. Add gas (miles divided by your mpg, times the local price) or airfare.
4. Set a food number per person per day that matches how you really eat. A kitchen or a cooler changes it.
5. Add the small stuff: parking, rink admission, a replacement stick.
6. Multiply across the number of out-of-town events, then decide which ones you can skip.

Step 6 is the one that saves money. Fewer, better tournaments beat a full calendar, and the Nickel City piece lists "fewer, higher-quality tournaments" among its seven suggestions. For tactics on the rest, read how to save money on tournament weekends and the hockey tournament weekend cost budget.

Check your tournament

Before you commit, look up the event in the tournament finder to see its published hotel rule and when we last checked it. If you want to keep the hotel decision in your own hands, browse the tournaments with no hotel requirement. Policies change, so an email alert can save you a surprise.