Women in sport on the up as Sport England figures show rises in tennis and athletics participation

Rise in participation: Tennis is among the sports to see more taking part
Getty Images
James Benge10 December 2015

A sharp rise in the number of women taking part in sport at least once a week has helped spark an overall increase in participation figures in England.

Sport England this morning announced the number of women playing sport has increased by 148,700, with the overall figure for both sexes of 15.74million in the 12 months to the end of September — up by 245,200 compared to June.

Some sports suffered drops in participation — most worryingly swimming, which saw another fall of 39,300 to just over 2.5m. Football and cycling also experienced falls, while tennis, cricket, boxing and rugby union saw increases in the numbers taking part.

Athletics enjoyed the biggest rise, up 98,700 to 2.3m, much of it driven by more women running.

Sport England believes its ‘This Girl Can’ campaign, which specifically targeted women, has had a major impact, with the accompanying video being watched more than 37m times on social media.

Jennie Price, Sport England’s chief executive, said: “It’s good news that more women are playing sport. It’s particularly great to see ‘This Girl Can’ is making a real difference as we’ve really focused on what drives women’s attitudes and behaviours.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT