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The Exercise, Recreation and Sport Survey (ERASS) is an Australia-wide survey to determine the level of activity undertaken by Australians over 15 and what sort of exercise, recreation and sport they participated in.
It’s funded by the Australian Sports Commission and the state and territory government agencies responsible for sport and recreation.
The first survey was conducted in 2001 and the Standing Committee on Sport and Recreation has recently released its ninth annual ERASS data collection results, completed in 2010.
The surveys run quarterly throughout Australia and the ERASS collects information on the frequency, duration, nature and type of physical activities, by persons aged 15 years and over for exercise, recreation or sport during the 12 months prior to interview.
Participation means active ‘playing’ participation and does not include coaching, refereeing and being a spectator, or activities related to work, household chores or gardening duties.
The biggest winner in the latest ERASS survey is football, both indoor and outdoor, which has increased in participation rate across Australia by 60 per cent during the ERASS survey period.
Football (1,252,600 participants) has overtaken golf (1,103,100) for the first time ever in the ERASS surveys.
Outdoor football on its own (879,800) also finished ahead of netball (686,800) for the first time, as the most popular team sport. This was helped by the large growth in junior football players across the country and a large increase on previous surveys in female football participants.
The recent success and increased media attention on the A-League, Socceroos national men’s football team and the Matildas national women’s football team has been seen as major contributors to the large recent growth in the popularity of football.
The largest increases in football participation has occurred in the last three surveys (2007-2009), and the sport is predicted to continue to have strong growth.
If you add the results of the 2009 ERASS survey for over 15 year olds (1,252,600) to the Bureau of Statistics 2009 survey for sport and recreation for under 15s (437,300), you will get a total football participation for all Australians of approximately 1,689,900 players.
Football also has the largest number of clubs and officials running those clubs across all states.
The Australian state with the highest number of football participants in the 2009 ERASS survey is NSW. There were over 507,500 participants in NSW for indoor and outdoor football.
This compares to 390,900 for golf, 192,000 for netball, 136,800 for rugby league and 58,500 for Australian Rules.
Obviously the NSW Football Association and the Football Federation of Australia are delighted with the results and the stunning growth of the game domestically across all areas, ages and backgrounds – male or female.
Even though the FFA might run the most number of sporting competitions in the country and have the most players, from a commercial viewpoint, the participation domination has not yet translated into a financial or media coverage dominance over the other competing Australian sporting codes.
This is the great challenge facing Australian football administrators to this day – to convert the superior numbers of football players into paying football fans and a greater source of revenue for the FFA and other domestic football associations.
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