Participation increased in every snow sports discipline during the 2008-09 season from downhill skiing to snowshoeing, according to an inaugural overview report released by The Physical Activity Council, a new research group.
The survey shows winter sports generally had a good year due to great snow during the 2008-09 winter season. Most activities had single-digit growth. Participation in snowshoeing, one of the least expensive snow sports to participate in, grew 17%. Roughly 300,000 more Americans, meanwhile, participated in cross-country skiing. The only monitored winter sport to show a decline was snowmobiling, typically an expensive option.
The overview report, available at www.physicalactivitycouncil.com, provides a glimpse into findings from a survey of more than 40,000 Americans on behalf of seven sporting goods trade organizations representing manufacturers and retailers of golf, outdoor, racquet, snow, team and other sporting goods. Each trade organization will release broader versions of the report with detailed research on participation, spending and other trends across 117 activities this spring.
SnowSports Industries America (SIA) said last week that it will release its version of the report in May. The SIA Snow Sports Participation Report will include detailed demographics including education levels, income levels, age, gender, geographic location, frequency of participation; cross-over data for all 117 different activities measured by the Council; participant cluster maps, core participation, and more. The SIA will provide the report-valued at $500-to its members for free.
By banding together the trade groups share costs for a much more accurate study that each could not afford to undertake individually. While other studies that measure snow sports participation across the U.S. population sample a relatively small group of persons in the population, the 2010 PAC survey has a sample size of 41,141 completed interviews that provide a high degree of statistical accuracy. During January and early February 2010, a total of 15,067 individual and 25,074 household surveys were completed.
All surveys are subject to some level of standard error-that is, the degree to which the results might differ from those obtained by a complete census of every person in the United States. A sport with a participation rate of 5%, for instance, has a confidence interval of plus or minus 0.21 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. This translates to plus or minus 4% of participants.
