Sport England have released their latest Active People Survey – and we’re delighted to announce that it’s great news for netball.
The results show the highest ever number of netballers are playing regularly since APS began. Meaning also that over the last year, netball has been the fastest growing female team sport.
Between April 2015 and March 2016, 164,100 people played netball once a week with Sport England documenting that 13,100 more people are involved in netball than the previous year.
This increase is mostly driven by the older (25+) populations (and in particular a big increase in the 35-44 age group) so we’d like to extend a huge thank you for all of the hard work by fantastic volunteers, partners and staff up and down the country to make this happen.
Clubs and leagues make a massive contribution to figures like these, along with a menu of successful England Netball programmes including Back to Netball and Netball Now.
Joanna Adams, England Netball Chief Executive said:
“This gives us great confidence that we understand the netball market better than ever, and can continue to grow the sport.
“We’re delighted that so many more women across the country have taken to netball and are playing regularly, and we’ll work hard to see that continue to grow further and really impact people’s lives in so many ways.
“Many thanks go out to all our volunteers and staff for their hard work, without which figures like this wouldn’t be possible.”
There has been an increase in general in women participating in sport and we’re excited that netball is a big part of the increase and will strive to keep involving more and more people in netball in a way that works for them.
Sport England’s full Active People Survey is on their website here.
