The Netherlands is increasingly coming to a standstill when it comes to sports practice. In addition, corona has had an impact on sports practice in our country. In particular, the lockdown last autumn cut it, according to figures released by NOC*NSF on Friday.
The lockdowns during the corona pandemic play a major role in the total decrease. But where during the first lockdown in 2020 Dutch people who did continue to exercise did so even more often, the sports frequency among these athletes also decreased during the second and third lockdown. This went from an average of 9.6 times a month in 2019, to 8.2 times a month two years later.
The decrease mainly occurred among young people aged 5 to 18 years. While 78 percent of young people were still involved in sports in the corona-free 2019, this dropped to 68 percent a year later, while in 2021 only 65 percent were still involved in some form of sport.
“We see a huge backlog of exercise,” says Van den Tweel, general manager of NOC*NSF. “Unfortunately, the figures show that the way back up has not yet started. The effect on the sports participation of young people is particularly worrying. After the corona crisis, we are now in an exercise crisis.”
Indoor sports, in particular, were hit hard. In times of lockdowns, they had to deal with closed sports halls. In two years, 1.8 million indoor athletes disappeared from the radar. Here too, youth is the largest group of dropouts, with a drop of 15 percent in two years.
Besides cycling, walking is the only sport in the top 10 that has grown since corona. Specifically among the youth, football remained the biggest sport. Swimming, as in 2020, suffered the largest losses.
The number of members of sports associations – not necessarily practitioners but also, for example, coaches – rose by 66,000 among adults. Among the youth there was a small decrease: 10,000. KNVB football association remained by far the largest with 1,150 million members, followed by Sportvisserij Nederland (595,000) and tennis association KNLTB (576,000).