New US sport participation figures released

The report shows walking for exercise is still the number one activity in terms of participation – it has been the top activity since 1990. The report shows that 96.6-m Americans walked for exercise in 2008.

Swimming (up 6.1%) has inched past exercising with equipment and is now in the second highest spot. 63.5-m participants swam for exercise in 2008 whereas 63.0-m people exercised with equipment.

In number four and number five positions, bowling and camping have very similar participation numbers: 49.5-m and 49.4-m respectively.

Hiking is a newcomer to the Top 10 participation categories and has 38.0-m participants, placing it at number 9. Power boating fell out of the Top 10 list, declining by almost 13% to 27.8-m participants and ending up at number 15.

The rest of the Top 10 were as follows:

Basketball was the top team sport with 29.7-m participants. Next came baseball (15.2-m), softball (12.8-m), volleyball (12.2-m) and tackle football (10.5-m). Only tackle football showed a drop in participation figures (down 3.7%). The other team sports showed a growth of between one and nine percent. Volleyball has been declining for a number of years, but seems to have stabilized.

41 sporting categories were included in the 2008 survey. Of these, 26 increased in participation numbers and 15 showed declines. New activities for the 2008 report include cheerleading and canoeing.