Netball is now more popular than Australian Rules Football when it comes to grassroots team participation.
New participation figures released by Ausplay, which is led by the Australian Sports Commission, revealed netball is now the third highest team participation sport in Australia, after cracking one million participants.
Not only has it remained the number one team participation sport for women and girls, it has bumped Australian Rules Football to fourth on the rankings.
Participation in netball has steadily grown over the last three years. The most recent Ausplay data, captured across 2022, indicated there were 874,000 women and girls participating in netball, up from more than 778,000 two years prior.
More men and boys have also been picking up a netball.
More than 126,600 men and boys participated in netball last year, up from a reported 76,100 in 2020.
These latest participation figures show the strength and passion of the grassroots and community netball network, as well as the sports' growth since the Covid-19 pandemic hindered community sport.
While a key driver of that participation growth is Woolworths NetSetGO with numbers in that program steadily increasing.
Ausplay team participation data for 2022:
- Football/Soccer: 1,720,800
- Basketball: 1,175,200
- Netball: 1,000,600
- Australian Football: 924,400
Ausplay participation data for the last three years in netball:
|
|
WOMEN
|
GIRLS
|
MEN
|
BOYS
|
|
2022
|
580,700
|
293,300
|
115,400
|
11,200
|
|
2021
|
444,600
|
279,900
|
86,300
|
11,900
|
|
2020
|
491,300
|
286,700
|
64,300
|
11,800
|
