The Sport New Zealand trends report brings together data from three different Sport NZ surveys from 1998, 2008 and 2014. It provides a picture of how adult participation in sport and active recreation has changed over the past 16 years.

Some key findings include:

• Participation has been falling in many parts of the world and New Zealand is no different. Although we still have high levels of participation, we now know that nationally the weekly adult participation fell 7.7% between 1998 and 2014 (from 73.3% to 65.6%).
• Greater participation decreases occurred in younger adults’ participation
• Ethnic group participation rates differ over time
• Greater rates of decline occur in weekly participation for adults in lower income households
• Greater rates of decline occurred in participation for men
• Volunteering decreased overall but increase in certain groups
• Club membership has decreased  by 11% and fitness centre membership has increased by 3.6%

The full report can be downloaded here