Grays On Trays

Whenever the topic of bad behavior by the part of snowboarders comes up, you may hear someone point out that it’s an activity populated by young boys and teenaged boys, two groups not often thought of as models of politeness. In other words, the bad attitudes that some people see in snowboarding isn’t unique to snowboarding, but instead lies in its largest demographic.

Over the last few days I’ve been looking at some surveys conducted by the National Sporting Goods Association, and I thought of ways to test this theory. One of the NSGA surveys offers a gender breakdown for various sports, and for each sex, the median age of participants.

Of the 46 activities in the report, only nine are numerically dominated by women. They are: aerobic exercising, exercise walking, exercising with equipment, in-line roller skating, lacrosse, swimming, volleyball, working out at a club, and yoga.

Another nine favor men, though only slightly. They are: bicycle riding, camping, hiking, kayaking, running/jogging, scooter riding [what's that?], cross-country skiing, softball, and tennis.

In the rest of the activities, men outnumber women, sometimes by very large numbers. Over 70 percent of the participants in the following activities are males 7 and up: archery, baseball, tackle football, golf, ice hockey, hunting (both firearms and bow and arrow), muzzleloading, paintball, skateboarding, target shooting, wrestling, and yes, snowboarding. Downhill skiing, for what it’s worth, is moderately though not overwhelmingly male, at about 60 percent.

It should also be no surprise that some activities have younger participants than others. The median age of the male golfer, for example, is 41.5 years. The median skateboarder is 16.3 years old. For snowboarding, the number is 21.6. (All numbers are from the 2007 survey.)

Are there any sports that resemble snowboarding in being both primarily male and beyond that, primarily young male? Perhaps one that has the same “bad boy” rap that snowboarding sometimes carries. So I looked for sports in which males made up 73.5 percent of participants, for whom the median age was 21.6 years, plus or minus 5 percent for both numbers.

Only one met both criteria: baseball. Does that tell us anything? I’m not sure. Baseball is a team activity, and the demands of being on a team may promote certain kinds of behavior that an individual activity doesn’t.

Three other activities came close on the percentage of male participants: golf, skateboarding, and target shooting. I don’t very little about target shooting, but when you consider golf and skateboarding, it would seem that age does play a significant role in setting the reputation of the activity and those who practice it.

Lacrosse players and inline skaters were on average the same age as snowboarders, but women were much more represented, with each activity nearly split down the middle on the gender line. To pose what may be the closest analogy in this whole comparison, do inline skaters carry the same rap among casual cyclists as snowboarders do among some segments of the skiing public? In both cases, enthusiasts use different technology in the same space.

Finally, the median age of participants in wrestling and paintball (individual activities) was similar to that of snowboarding, though much more male-dominated.

Rather than engage in further sociological speculation, I’ll leave it here for now. If you have any thoughts on this, please leave a comment.

Periodically I get e-mail from people–usually middle-school students, it seems–looking for information on the number of people who snowboard.

It’s hard to get definitive answers. Much of the information is from surveys taken by trade associations. Since the associations want to offer their research as a membership benefit, they are sometimes cautious about distributing their findings free of charge, and may give away some but not of the information you’re interested in. Further, different associations use different measuring tools, meaning that the results may not line up from survey to survey. Finally, the associations don’t always ask the kinds of questions you’d like answers to.

With those limitations in mind, today I’ll review a few findings from the National Sporting Goods Association.

Total number of riders nearing number of downhill skiers

First, the National Sporting Goods Association says, in its 10-year survey, that snowboarding is on an upward trend. It estimates the number of people, age 7 and up, who engage in a whole host of activities, ranging from aerobic exercise to yoga, at least twice in a year.

Here are the numbers for snowboarders:

YEAR … Participants (millions)
1998 … 3.6
2000 … 4.3
2002 … 5.6
2004 … 6.6
2006 … 5.2
2008 … 5.9

Despite snowboarding’s legacy as a “hot” or “sexy” sport, it draws a fairly limited number of people. There are many more people engaged in walking for exercise (96.6 million), bowling (49.5 million), and golf (25.6 million), among other activities. Among board sports, skateboarding draws more participants (9.8 millions), while surfing isn’t mentioned.

Among snow sports, downhill skiing is the biggest sport (6.5 million). Cross-country skiing (1.6 million) lags far behind both downhill skiing and snowboarding.

One interesting finding is that snowboarding is drawing closer to skiing in popularity. In 1998, there were 2,139 skiers for every 1,000 snowboarders. In 2008, that ratio has dropped significantly, with only 1,102 skiers for every 1,000 skiers. In 2004, the number of snowboarders was actually greater the number of skiers, though that may have been a statistical anomaly.

One fact to point out is that it’s possible for a person to participate in snowboarding, downhill skiing, and cross-country skiing.

Snowboarding still a niche sport among 45 to 54-year olds

How many of those snowboarders are 40 and up? The NSGA doesn’t provide those numbers. Instead, it provides estimates of the number of 45 to 54-year olds engaging in various sports, both in 1997 and 2008.

While the number of snowboarders in this age range increased 34 percent, its growth was far behind that of skateboarding, which at 243 percent was the fastest-growing of the 36 sports listed. (Snowboarding was 21st.)

In 2008, there were 146,000 snowboarders aged 45 to 54. That’s less than the number of people playing basketball (1.6 million), hockey (228,000) and even tackle football (275,000), though more than the number of skateboarders (127,000). Snowboarding is still a niche activity within this age group.

Snowboarding is still dominated by boy and young men

Overall, snowboarding is predominately a male activity, according to the NSGA report, “2007 – 2002 Participation by Mean Age – Male & Female.” The report, which measures participants 7 and up, says that in 2007, 74 percent of snowboarders were men or boys, with a median age of 21.6 years old. The median age of female participants was even lower, at 18.8 years. By comparison, 61 percent of downhill skiers were men or boys, with an average age of 33.6. The median age for females was actually higher, at 35.8.

How many snowboarders are there? Read on.

Transworld Business has the latest on the SnowSports Industries America 2009 SIA Intelligence Report.

Among the points that Mike Lewis found in the report.

More and more sales are taking place online. That’s no surprise, given that the market skews younger than the general population. Sales (by units, not dollars) grew 23% online, but fell 4% in specialty shops, and plummeted 13% in chain stores. There similar numbers if you look at dollars: Up 23% online, down 6% in specialty shops, down 20% in chain stores. About 17% of all sales are now online. (If you’re looking for a new board, I’d recommend looking for a never-used last-year’s model at a specialty shop. You’ll increase your chances of finding someone who might actually help you find the right board for your interests and abilities.)

Women-specific boards are a significant part of the market, coming in at 20%. As long as it’s not a pink and flowery version of a standard unisex board, some women may find a women’s specific board useful, though the key is probably finding the right combination of stiffness, flex, length, width, and so forth, something that can be done with unisex boards. Still, from strictly a marketing point of view, the growth of women-specific boards is a good trend.

The average rider was on the snow 8 days last season. That’s not a lot. With a busy “real life” schedule last year, I got in 5 full “resort” days and perhaps 7 to 10 partial days at a local ski area.

In what may be another sign of the youthful skew in the snowboarding population, 60% of riders said they rode at least once “outside of resort areas.” This could mean slipping briefly beyond the out-of-bounds limit of a resort, full-blown back-country riding, or “a simple rail in the school yard,” which actually be the largest category within that 60 percent. (This is where I say that youth comes into play. I suspect that rail riders, even more than snowboarders in general, skew younger.) Come to think of it, I fall into that 60%, too, having taken my board to a small hill at a city park to give someone a very basic lesson.

One-third of all resort visitors were on a snowboard. Does this mean that one-third of all snow “riders” are snowboarders? Not necessarily. It could be that skiers outnumber snowboarders by a ratio of 4 to 1, but that snowboarders visit the slopes more frequently. There are numbers out there on this;I have to check that out.

The decline in the number of riders may have stopped. A few years ago, the number peaked at 6.5 million. It dropped three years in a row, to 5 million in 2007-08. During 08-09, 5.8 million people went snowboarding at least twice once, the first “up” season in four years.

What I don’t find in the quick treatment of the report is the number of riders who are 35 year old and up. I’ve long thought it was somewhere around 500,000, but it’s been a while since I have seen new statistics.

(Corrected to indicate “twice” instead of “once” as the threshold for determining the number of snowboarders in a season.)

Writing at Transworld Business, Mike Lewis talks about trends in snowboarding and skiing–how many people participate, why, and what the ski and snowboard industry is doing to keep them going back for more.

It’s a long article, so I’ll just highlight a few statistics.

- Nearly 3 in 4 snowboarders are boys or men. No surprise there, if you look at your local hill.
- Historically, only 15 percent of people who try skiing or snowboarding return for a second day.
- A 10-year effort by the ski area association has raised that rate to … 16 percent.
- Even among people who snowboard regularly, 25 percent drop out during any given year, for reasons relating to health, work, interest, family, or finances.
- The “typical’ snowboarder went snowboarding 10 days during a season.
- During 2007, over 5 million people went snowboarding at least twice.
- Only 10 percent of snowboarders are 35 and older. Still, that makes for a half-million riders 35 and up.

Here’s an approximation of the number of snowboarders for each season, with a 2-visit per season minimum:

1994 – 2,061,000
1995 – 2,254,000
1996 – 3,711,000
1997 – 2,516,000
1998 – 3,635,000
1999 – 3,313,000
2000 – 4,347,000
2001 – 5,343,000
2002 – 5,589,000
2003 – 6,309,000
2004 – 6,572,000
2005 – 5,987,000
2006 – 5,204,000
2007 – 5,063,000

Notice that participation has been going down ever since it peaked in 2004. Why? I don’t know.

Most of the article deals with industry efforts to reverse the slide and retain first-time participants. The focus is on youth and minorities. Only 10 percent of companies focus on “older” adults. And “older” isn’t defined, so it may be 25 to 34!

The article also reminds us that people take up snowboarding for different reasons. Roughly half do so for the challenge, while while a quarter look for the social benefits. And of course someone can have more than one motivation, either in a given time or over time. I started skiing for social reasons, but took up snowboarding for the challenge.

By the way, I wonder if those numbers look the same if you’re talking about skiers.

For more on this topic, see the statistics page of GraysOnTrays.com.