Sports Photography Trends: Growth in Girls Soccer a Big Opportunity for Youth Sports Photographers
November 30th, 2011 | Published in Featured
When it comes to Youth Sports Photography, photographers love shooting the big three – football, basketball and baseball. But one can’t ignore the growing trends in youth soccer.
According to the U.S. Youth Soccer Association, since 1990 the number of participants in youth soccer leagues all over the country has almost doubled from 1.6 million to over 3 million in 2010.
But the growing trend in youth soccer isn’t the fact that the overall sport is growing, but the fact that it’s growing in popularity with young women.
In fact we’re almost to the point where, among active players in youth soccer leagues, there are more girls playing soccer than boys.
In 2008, the percentage of girls playing youth soccer, among active players, was 48% up from 45% in 2000 – while the percentage of boys playing soccer was 52%, down from 55% in 2000 according to statistics provided by the U.S Youth Soccer Association.
This kind of growth provides a huge opportunity for sports photographers looking for new business, especially if they’re wanting to branch out into other sports besides the most popular such as little league baseball or pop warner football, because it means an increasing number of subjects to shoot and the more photos you take the higher your overall sales will be.
But the fact that soccer’s popularity is growing among young women is also exciting for sports photographers. Sometimes photographers will get a little too focused on the most popular boys’ sports, thinking that they’re the only ones worth shooting which is completely untrue.
Through several events that we’ve shot, we’ve found that girls’ sports have just as much, and in some cases more, sales potential than boys’. In fact, in some cases sales from girls’ basketball have exceeded boys’ football.
Regardless of what a photographer shoots they need to realize that children are branching out and participating in several different sports like soccer, rugby or lacrosse. That’s not to say that sports photographers should stop shooting the most popular sports, but they need to realize that there are more opportunities for business than just shooting football or basketball and that they can capitalize on the growing popularity of these new sports.
If you want to know how you can grow your youth sports photography business, Candid Color Systems can help! Contact our Customer Development department at 800-336-4550 today.
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