I love this discussion, as I thought this is only a Asia problem with declining of new players playing the sports.
Interesting to see how Europe is slowing down as well.
My take would be to
– reduce game time to 80 or 90 minutes withe squad size of 18 – 21 as maximum.
– with the reduce game time, it would help manage cost of running events better as more games can be fit if there’s insufficient field space or shorter tournament days needed to host the event.
– that way risk of injury can be managed (assuming the game time is shorter and assuming since max cap of players is now lower)
another take I have is to popularise 5v5 formats on grass with diff set of rules so that it could help to spur more growth too in the scene where it’s easier to form a team
think o fit like futsal and football or like normal basektball and 3v3 basketball.
wfdf could potentially create a new market with this.