Mr Patsy McGlone (Mid Ulster): To ask the Minister for Communities to detail any estimate he has made of the number of (i) adults; and (ii) children, participating in (a) GAA; (b) soccer (c) rugby union; (d) cricket; (e) tennis; (f) boxing; (g) athletics; (h) golf; (i) gymnastics; (j) netball; (k) basketball, in 2025, broken down by gender.
Minister for Communities: My Department holds limited information on adult participation in sport, primarily obtained through the Continuous Household Survey, with the most recent results for 2024/25 published in November 2025. These results can be found at https://www.communities-ni.gov.uk/publications/experience-sport-adults-northern-ireland-202425.
However, Sport NI holds more detailed information relevant to your enquiry, and its Chief Executive has advised me that:
“Data held by Sport NI on sports club membership is self-reported at financial year end by National Governing Bodies in receipt of investment awards. This therefore does not reflect all those participating across Northern Ireland in the named sports.
Sport NI does not currently independently verify or validate this data and age-based data is not held. Table 1 shows the membership data by gender returned for 2024/25.
Table 1: 2024/25 Membership data by gender
| Sport | Female Membership 2024/25 | Male Membership 2024/25 | Total Membership 2024/25 | |
| Athletics | 4,230 | 4,595 | 8,825 | |
| Basketball | 415 | 1,271 | 1,686 | |
| Boxing | 1,801 | 7,049 | 8,850 | |
| Cricket | 1,363 | 6,284 | 7,647 | |
| Football | 8,580 | 64,671 | 73,251 | |
| Gaelic Games | 78,306 | 102,571 | 180,877 | |
| Golf | 9,522 | 38,089 | 47,611 | |
| Gymnastics | 13,305 | 1,957 | 15,262 | |
| Netball | 2,877 | 3 | 2,880 | |
| Rugby | 2,274 | 10,852 | 13,126 | |
| Tennis | 3,211 | 3,523 | 6,734 | |
| Total | 125,884 | 240,865 | 366,749 |
ENDS
Your MLA 