Sports Management Issue 1 2012 - Leisure Opportunities

According to APS data, the number
of people cycling regularly in 2010/11
grew by 126,400 since 2005/6
CASE STUDY:
ENGLAND NETBALL – USING INSIGHT TO DRIVE PARTICIPATION
T
he Active People Survey (APS)
shows that netball participation
has grown by 18 per cent over
the last five years, partly due to the
success of programmes such as England
Netball’s Back to Netball. This hasn’t
happened by chance, but is built on
the commitment the governing body
has shown to putting their participants
at the heart of everything they do –
the Participant-Centred Approach.
Over the last 18 months, England
Netball has undertaken a huge project
to identify the behaviours, motivations,
expectations, capabilities and
needs of current netballers and potential
future participants to help shape
their offers, programmes and structures.
They have combined information
from a wide range of surveys, audits,
questionnaires, in-depth interviews
and recorded conversations. Through
The Big Netball Conversation, the
governing body has talked directly to
nearly 10,000 netballers.
Data and insight derived from the
APS has been a key component of this
process. It has particularly supported
understanding of the large number of
participants accessing netball activities
outside the sport’s traditional structures.
While England Netball has a
membership of just over 50,000 adult
members, more than 130,000 on average
play netball once a week.
The customer-centred understanding
is already driving the development
of the ‘My Game’ portfolio of
offers for current and potential netball
players aimed at offering a game and
product of choice for any participant
and it will underpin the continuing
evolution of England Netball’s strategic
plan. The sport will also be continuing
to talk to participants and building
understanding of their needs as new
data emerges – as with all successful
organisations, the path to success
starts and ends with understanding
their customers.
4.24 million, women’s participation has
failed to keep pace. It’s clear from this
that more needs to be done to make
sport attractive to women.
SPORT BY SPORT
With six years data to look at, what do
we know about the relative popularity of
different sports Sport England measures
the sports it funds on the number of
people who are playing the sport at least
once a week for 30 minutes.
Among team sports, the picture in
2010/11 looks similar to six years ago;
football remains far out in front with
over 2.1 million weekly participants, followed
by cricket, rugby union, basketball
and netball. The most likely change to
that order appears to be among the final
two, with netball showing a positive
trend and basketball flagging, particularly
in the last two years of APS figures.
But overall the popularity of these team
sports has remained relatively constant
over the period.
The picture for individual sports is
much more dynamic. Participation in
cycling and athletics (which includes running)
has increased by around 125,000
and 550,000 respectively, while swimming
is down by around 460,000 over
the six-year period. However, swimming
remains comfortably the most
popular sport with around 2.8 million
weekly participants. Inevitably the
changes in numbers of participants are
largest among the bigger sports, but
proportionately there has been some
very impressive growth in some slightly
smaller sports, notably table tennis and
mountaineering.
INCREASING PARTICIPATION IN A
CHALLENGING ECONOMIC CLIMATE
So what impact is the challenging economic
situation having on people’s
sports participation
Taking part in sport is a leisure choice
involving discretionary spend. If an individual’s
budget tightens, they will have
lower discretionary spend. But do people
stop playing sport altogether or do they
protect their active lifestyle by switching
to lower cost activities
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