Sporting rates high but clubs struggle to survive

The Community sport and active recreation in Victoria: changes and challenges paper found an estimated 85.4 per cent of the state’s adult population, about 4.8 million people, had engaged in community sport and active recreation (CSAR) at some point in 2023–24.

“ ‘It can be a pastime, a hobby, a passion, even a necessity.’ ”

Despite the high rate of participation, many clubs and organisations face challenges to longevity and sustainability, with the retention of volunteers and adequacy of facilities identified as pressing concerns.

For individuals, it’s cost of living, gender disparities and barriers for marginalised groups which make ongoing involvement difficult.

The research paper explores in-depth the types of activities undertaken, the motivations for participation, non-participation among younger and older people, volunteer rates and CSAR’s benefits, including to physical and mental health.

‘All these factors will continue to affect the ways people engage with community sport, how it is organised, how it is delivered and the scope of benefits it can provide across the population,’ the paper said.

There’s also a thorough look at women’s experiences in the sports landscape, including efforts to change club culture, trends in media representation and wider inclusion and equity.

‘Women’s participation in sport and active recreation has been consistently strong through the years. However, traditionally women have favoured non-sport-related activity,’ the paper said.

Broadly, this is still the case. Recent statistics from the Australian Sports Commission indicate men are more active in sport-related activities (59.1 per cent) than women (42.6 per cent), while women are more active in non-sport activities such as gym/fitness, bushwalking and recreational dance.

However, widespread success of elite-level women’s teams in historically male-dominated sports such as soccer, AFL and basketball has, in turn, helped grow participation opportunities for women in community-level sport.

In terms of children’s participation, swimming was the most popular extracurricular sport for boys and girls, followed by basketball, soccer and AFL for boys and gymnastics for girls.

Although none of this comes cheap.

‘In many cases, children’s participation in sports, such as swimming can be even more expensive than an adult’s participation costs, placing additional pressures on families,’ the paper said.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted CSAR activity significantly, and the analysis explains how it affected not only the physical and mental health of the population, but also club livelihoods.

‘COVID-19 brought about a wide-scale shift from club-based active recreation to individual and autonomous activity, with participation in sport down across all cohorts, especially younger people,’ the paper said.

Despite the benefits on offer and the widespread participation in CSAR, some cohorts are still underrepresented in different parts of the sporting scene.

People with a disability, low-income earners and First Nations peoples remain underrepresented in community sport and the paper found one of the major barriers for not only First Nations peoples but also people from multicultural backgrounds is the incidence of racism.

Broader challenges facing the viability of community sport on an organisational scale include the burden of administration, the rising costs of funding facilities and increasing threat of climate change.

Read the full paper with all the statistics and information.