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Walking is the Number One Although participation declined 2.6 percent, exercise walking continued ahead of swimming as America's most popular activity among the 45 sports and fitness activities surveyed by the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) for 1991. Exercise walking had 69.6 million participants in 1991, versus 71.4 million in 1990. Swimming drew 66.2 million participants in 1991, a 1.9 percent decline from 67.5 million in 1990. Completing the top ten activities were bicycle riding (54 million participants), camping (47.1 million), fishing (47 million), bowling (40.4 million), exercising with equipment (39.2 million), billiards/pool (29.6 million), basketball (26.2 million) and aerobic exercising (25.9 million). Among traditional team sports, basketball ranked 9th; volleyball, 13th (22.6 million); softball, 16th(19.6 million); baseball, 21st (16.5 million); football, 22nd (13.3 million), and soccer, 27th (10 million). Ice hockey drew the fewest participants—1.8 million—among team sports. Among activities with more than ten million participants, aerobic exercising and exercising with equipment showed the highest percentage increases in 1991, up 11.5 percent and 10.9 percent, respectively. Motorboating showed the greatest decline, down almost 22 percent, from 28.6 million boaters in 1990. "However, the truly outstanding performer was in-line skating, whose participation doubled to 1.3 million participants in 1991," NSGA Director of Information and Research Thomas B. Doyle said. "That growth was confirmed by the consumer purchases of in-line skates reported in NSGA's Sporting Goods Market report. In-line skate sales quadrupled to $165 million in 1991. "Although 1991 was a recessionary year. it did not seem to affect the number of people who indicated they worked out at a club," Doyle said. "About 20.2 million Americans said they worked out in clubs in 1991, virtually unchanged from the number the previous year." A participant is defined as someone seven years of age or older who plays a sport more than once within the year. For swimming, exercise walking, bicycling, exercising with equipment, running/jogging, calisthenics and aerobics, participation is defined as doing the activity six times or more within the year. In me survey, participants are identified as frequent, occasional and infrequent. Although the number of days varies for each sport, frequent participants are identified as the top 25 percent of participants for the activity and infrequent participants are identified as the bottom 25 percent. Occasional participants are identified as the middle 50 percent. Sports Participation in 1991 measures the frequency of participation (number of days per year), the number of new participants during the current year and the number of individuals who participated in 1990 but not in 1991. The NSGA survey is available in two parts. The cost to members is $195 and to non-members, $245. Contact NSGA, 1699 Wall St., Mt. Prospect. Ill. 60056; 708/439-4000; fax, 708/439-0111. This article is reprinted with permission of the National Sporting Goods Association. It first appeared in the August 1992 issue of their publication, NSGA Retail Focus.
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