Every year the Sporting Good Manufacturer Association releases a Sports Fitness and Recreation Participation Overview that monitors the popularity of various sports and activities across this great nation of ours. I’ve taken the liberty of boiling down the report that would cost you $695 to purchase. The stats you need to know:
America’s Favorite Activity? Walking
↵— Over 110 million Americans made walking the most popular athletic activity last year. Then came bowling with a shade over 57 million participants. If there’s a better representation of the American population, I sure as hell don’t know what it is.
↵— The most popular machines at the gym these days? The elliptical machine and free weights. As a professional blogger, I have no knowledge of either of those things.
↵— Darts and Billiards are in steep decline, down 14 and 12 percent respectively. This just confirms what we already knew. Big Buck Hunter is the undisputed heavyweight champion of parlor “sports.”
↵— Basketball is the most popular team sport in America with 24 million participants. If I’d asked you at the beginning of this article, “What’s more popular, basketball or bowling?” what would you have said? ... I know, me too.
↵— Pilates is the fastest growing activity in America. Its 8.6 million participants marks a cartoonish 456 percent increase since 2000. No word on how many of those people “could have sworn the sign said Pirates.”
↵You can find some of the other statistics from the study here. Now please, let’s all just stop bowling. We need next year’s study to be a little more flattering.
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