Bowling even more alone: trends towards individual participation in sport

ABSTRACT

Research question: In the 1990s trends in sports participation in England revealed that participation in individual sports was growing whilst participation in team sports was in decline. This paper examines whether this trend has continued more recently and, if so, the plausible explanations for this trend towards individual sports participation.

Research methods: The paper uses secondary analysis of the Active People Survey (APS) from APS1 (2005/2006) to APS9 (2014/2015). The APS is undertaken annually with a sample of 160,000 respondents. It includes data on sports participation by sport type as well as data on organised sports participation including club membership, participation in competitive sport and coaching.

Results and findings: The findings demonstrate an ongoing trend of growth in participation in individual sports and, at the same time, a decline in participation in organised team sports in England. This trend towards participation in individual sports is particularly striking when examined against the significant public funding invested into organised sports between 2008 and 2016.

Implications: Whilst the findings clearly show the continued shift in patterns of sports participation from team sports to individual, the explanations for this are limited to the application of logic. More empirical work is needed to understand the reasons for the decline in organised sports participation and the growth in individual activities. The data suggest that despite the growth in individual sports participation, community sport policy as a whole has been ineffective, with 43 of 45 government-funded sports showing either no change or decreased participation. These results emphasise the failure of top-down, nationally led, sport-specific plans for growing sports participation and underline problems with the overly normative notion of evidence-based policy and practice. The findings add support to the government’s recent decision to revise community sport policy. Importantly, the new iteration of community sport policy must re-examine the challenge of growing organised sport, be clear about the opportunity offered by informal sport and assess the structures that might more effectively grow sports participation.

KEYWORDS:

• Sports participation
• community sport
• individual sports
• team sport
• sport policy

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and for their contribution in developing our paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See, for example, Cabinet Office (2015), DCMS (2000, 2001, 2002, 2012) and Sport England (2004, 2008a, 2016b).

2. Exaggerated insofar as the government recognised that to secure widespread public support, the benefits of hosting the Games must be perceived to outweigh the costs this is despite the ‘available evidence’ for such benefits being limited (Bloyce & Smith, 2012).

3. In this paper, gym refers to exercise using weights and/or cardio-vascular equipment.

4. The post-16 drop-off refers to a significant number of people who drop out of sports participation after leaving high school at 16.

5. The two exceptions are the City of London (100 interviews) and the Isles of Scilly (150 interviews).

6. The proportion of mobile-only households, while generally increasing, fell from 16% in quarter 1, 2014 to 15% in quarter 1, 2015 (see Ofcom, 2016).

7. The Active People and Active Lives Surveys will be conducted simultaneously from October 2015 to September 2016.

8. These data include TV viewership in England but are only presented at the UK level. More specific data for England alone are not available.

9. For the purpose of the APS, these recreational cycling and jogging are counted as sport participation and are attributed to the recognised NGB for that sport. Thus, jogging and recreational cycling are counted and attributed to England Athletics and British Cycling, respectively.