Tom Farrey
Founder and executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, where he leads initiatives including Project Play and the Why We Play conversation series. He is a former ESPN investigative journalist and author of Game On: The All-American Race to Make Champions of Our Children.
Soccer’s Democratic Promise Depends on Who Gets to Play
At an Aspen Ideas Festival session tied to the Aspen Institute and LACMA’s “Why We Play” project, Tom Farrey framed soccer as civic infrastructure: a game that can shape identity, trust, diplomacy, gender opportunity and economic life. Carolyn Blodgett, Betsey Stevenson and Glenn Kaino extended the case, arguing that those benefits do not flow from soccer automatically. They depend on the institutions around the game — schools, fields, transport, Title IX, team culture and affordability — and can disappear when access is captured by families able to pay for it.
Youth Sports Safety Reform Needs National Standards and Dedicated Funding
At Project Play Summit 2026, Benita Fitzgerald-Mosley of the U.S. Center for SafeSport and Seth Lieberman of Ankored argued that youth sports safety has become a governance problem as much as a cultural one. Parents increasingly expect background checks, abuse-prevention training and injury safeguards, but the speakers said today’s system is fragmented, underfunded and outside SafeSport’s reach for much of grassroots sport. The reform case is for common standards, portable credentials, dedicated funding and a stronger central safety infrastructure by 2028.
Youth Sport Reform Is Shifting From Programs to Children’s Rights Standards
Tom Farrey of the Aspen Institute, USA Volleyball chair Cassidy Lichtman, and Deloitte’s Mariam Mansury argue that U.S. youth sport needs new defaults, not just new programs. Using Norway’s child-first sport system, USA Volleyball’s development work, and city adoption of the Children’s Bill of Rights in Sports, they make the case for treating youth sport as an ecosystem governed by minimum standards around access, safety, coaching quality, developmentally appropriate play, and joy.
A $40 Billion Youth Sports Market Lacks Basic Child Safeguards
Tom Farrey of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program argues that youth sports need a basic governance layer if they are to deliver on their civic and developmental promise. In a conversation moderated by Chuck Todd, Farrey makes the case for registration, safety standards, abuse reporting, school-based support and a children’s rights framework, while Todd frames youth sports as one of the few remaining local institutions that still brings divided communities together. Their shared premise is that more participation is not enough if the system remains privatized, fragmented and weakly accountable.
Cost, Transit, and Field Shortages Limit Youth Soccer Access
A new Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program report on youth soccer in New York and New Jersey, discussed by Tom Farrey and philanthropist Laurie Tisch, argues that the region’s central problem is not children’s interest in the game but unequal access to it. Farrey said the report points to cost, transportation, field shortages and gender gaps as the barriers shaping who gets to play, while Tisch said the findings give her philanthropy a roadmap for a $10mn push into local soccer programs, fields and support for girls’ participation.