BADMINTON England is today proud to announce another consecutive increase in badminton participation following the release of the Active People Survey results by Sport England for the period October 2011 through to October 2012.

The increase sees 544,200 people playing badminton at least once a week, a rise of 6.6% in comparison to this time last year and almost 30,000 more since the launch of BADMINTON England’s ‘Decade of Delivery’ in 2006.

BADMINTON England’s Chief Executive Adrian Christy said “We are working extremely hard to encourage more people to pick up a racket and it is pleasing to see that this is paying dividends. The No Strings Badminton programme that we introduced three years ago was really focussed on bringing more women back into the sport.  It is one of the nation’s most successful sports development programmes with 350 franchises operating across the country, and I am delighted that this is being reflected in increased participation statistics.

“Badminton continues to be a strong sport in engaging young people with today’s results showing a promising increase in the number of 18-19 year olds playing the sport, with 8,000 more regularly getting on court than in 2009.  As an age group notoriously difficult to engage this increase is a direct reflection of our wider efforts to promote the sport, and to think differently in how we motivate and encourage this age-group. The Center Parcs National Schools Championships attracted over 30,000 participants this year which is a record seeing the event go from strength to strength, and we have also upped our game in terms of online promotion with the Playbadminton.co.uk website and marketing campaign.

“We have really exciting plans to increase badminton participation much further over the next few years and today’s announcement provides even more impetus to achieve that goal.”

Article by Badminton England, Photo by BadmintonPhoto