Ref Shortage

[Nevadaref]

Originally Posted by BillyMac

Basketball 24.4 million participants
Baseball/Softball 23.3 million participants
Soccer 13.6 million participants
Football 8.9 million participants
Ice hockey 3.1 million participants

You need to cut the numbers roughly in half for some of these to account for boys and girls participating. This would provide a truer picture of the relative popularity of these activities at the youth/HS level.

Basketball = 12.2M each
Baseball/Softball = 11.6M each
Football = 8.9M basically just boys
Soccer = 6.8M each
Ice hockey = 3.1M guessing that it's mostly boys