RESEARCH
According to report findings, swimming was one of the top five individual sports played in the past six months
DRIVING UP SPORTS PARTICIPATION
While the original targets for the sports participation legacy of the London 2012 Olympics have long been abandoned, recent trends in playing numbers suggest the Games may have more post-event value as a platform for driving up activity levels than cynics might expect. Mintel’s Amanda Lintott reports
2012 Games among young people will be crucial for all sports. Recent partici- pation gains have been led exclusively by over-25s and government policy has switched to promoting sporting habits for life among 16- to 25-year-olds that will see governing bodies supported on a funding-by-results basis. The research shows how the number
T
of adults playing some sport in 2012 is expected to return to the 30 million mark – up more than a million year on year but still 2.5 per cent down on the last Olympic cycle’s peak of 31 million. The key challenge for the market will be to avoid a repeat of the post-Olympic slump seen in 2009 – hoping that a Games held at home will help sustain interest in sport beyond the closing ceremony.
he latest research from Min- tel into sports participation highlights how picking up on interest sparked by the London
The report does however suggest the
higher profile of the London 2012 Games and the (hopefully) better prepared- ness of governing bodies’ participation programmes could deliver a bigger and more sustained uplift in playing numbers through 2013 at least. Participation at the recommended
level of thrice weekly has moved forward from a plateau of 6.9 million adults, but growth has been driven entirely by the over-25 demographic.
Varied sport provision Exploring how the market can encom- pass older participants, the report highlights the fact that with only a minority of clubs owning their own facili- ties, pressure on local authority leisure budgets is likely to force sport to look to a wider range of providers to improve the access to opportunity needed to grow the playing population.
42 Read Sports Management online
sportsmanagement.co.uk/digital Although two thirds of all sports
participants take part at least once a month, only slightly more than a third of this group do so at the recommend- ed healthy living frequency of at least three times a week. Indeed, one dilem- ma sports participation promotion faces is that the recreational play on which it focuses as the most enjoyable basis for most people’s involvement may not lend itself to the three-times-a-week partici- pation healthy living recommendations require – just as we may not want to go to the cinema three times a week, nor may we want to play three games of ten- nis a week either. It may therefore be necessary for
sports advocates and even governing bodies to cross-promote similar sports to entice recreational participants into play- ing a range of games that provide similar enjoyment benefits but offering a great- er variety of physical activity.
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