Athletics leads the way in increasing sports participation

Sport England today published a quarterly snapshot on regular sports participation in England. It shows that the number of adults aged 16 and over who play sport at least three times a week has reached 7 million.

Our Active People Survey of 192,000 people each year is the biggest of its kind, and is used to measure progress against our legacy target to get one million people playing more sport by 2012/13.

Participation results – both for individual sports and overall - are measured against baselines from Active People Survey 2, which was published in December 2008. This set the overall baseline for regular adult sports participation at 6.815 million.

Today’s update shows participation levels in the 12-month period to January 2010. Findings of note include:

• The number of adults taking part in athletics at least once a week has increased by more than 85,000 since the last update and by over 200,000 over the past 15 months
• There has been strong growth in participation among men aged between 35 and 54.

Since the last update, netball has joined the individual sports in which participation has significantly increased, while mountaineering has joined those showing a significant decrease.

More details can be found in the research section of our website.

ENDS

Notes to Editors

Sport England invests National Lottery and Exchequer funding in organisations and projects that will grow and sustain participation in grassroots sport and create opportunities for people to excel at their chosen sport.

Sport England is committed to creating a world-leading community sport system, and has set specific and measurable targets to achieve by 2012/13.

• One million people doing more sport
• A 25% reduction in the number of 16- to 18-year-olds who drop out of at least five key sports
• Improved talent development systems in at least 25 sports
• A measurable increase in people’s satisfaction with their experience of sport
• A major contribution to the delivery of the five hour sports offer for children and young people.