And it is in many countries, but for some reason the U.S. doesn't seem to work that way. I was a bit surprised when my son spent a year in high school in the U.S. and I found out how youth football (soccer) system works there. Over here in Europe, we have a plethora of local clubs that collect the young and old to train and play, and to work together to organise everything, fund it, and so on. In the U.S. the football (again, soccer) seems to be predominantly organised by schools, and a very small part of players belong to actual soccer clubs. I understand the same is true with other sports (American football, baseball, basketball, etc). Similarly we have lots of clubs that arrange things like music and orchestra trainings for youth, whereas in the U.S. this is also organized around schools.

This is good in many ways - for instance, the integration of activities to the school day helps it for kids - but at the same time, it makes the school's "quality" (in terms of what the teachers and staff are like and what kind of parents the children have) all so important. If the school fails, then everything will. And if you don't have kids at school, can you really contribute to the community in the same way as a seasoned football veteran can in a local club?

I think this is partly driven by population density. In much of the US, there's only enough people for ~1 such club in a given town (and often barely that).

It could be one factor, but still, the sports action doesn't seem to be organized around clubs even in higher density areas. My country has half the population density of U.S. and still organizes around local clubs, even in the lowest density areas.

Regarding churches and other religious institutions, however, the population density doesn't matter: the U.S. has many more of them, even where population is sparse.

meetup.com seems to be alive in every city....

How is the target audience for Meetup elsewhere? I live in Berlin and I noticed that it's almost exclusively developers (which is fun, but sometimes weird - I went to a street cycling meetup and everybody else was a dev too). Maybe the dominance of German clubs in organized leisure is the reason for that.

Because meetup.com is what the expat nerds know

I've given up on it though sometimes you find something "outside of the circle"

It's like craigslist in Berlin: there are only scams because Americans think it works the same as in the US, when Germans have never even heard of it

That was my impression too. In particular the types of meetups seem very limited to tech topics. Some are ok, mostly those that are actually meant for non-topic specific networking, like hiking groups etc, generally sports outside of clubs.

In my personal opinion, it's more centered around technology folks