By John Stouffer

May 21, 2001

More great news for snowboarding. According to a soon-to-be-published NSGA Sports Participation report, snowboarding shows a 31 percent increase for the calendar year 2000. The report has the number of snowboarders in the United States at 4.3-million, up from 3.3-million in 1999.

The NSGA Sports Participation report usually tracks the total number as much smaller than the recently released fourteenth annual American Sports Data Superstudy of Sports Participation that had snowboarding increasing 51.2 percent to just over 7.2-million, up from 5.4-million the previous year.

Why the difference in the two reports? Different counting methods. The American Sports Data Superstudy is based on a nationally represented sample of 14,772 Americans over the age of six, who were among 25,000 respondents targeted in a sample drawn from the consumer mail panel of NFO Research, Inc. The NSGA report also surveys anyone seven years and older and has 20,000 respondents. The details actually aren�t that important, but what is is that both reports show tremendous growth rates for snowboarding.

Interestingly enough, the NSGA Sports Participation Report shows alpine skiing down from 7.7-million to 7.4-million total, but that�s not really a surprise to anyone.

The second highest growth sport according to the NSGA is skateboarding, up 30.2 percent to 9.1-million total participants. The third-highest growth sport was snowshoeing up 18.3 percent to one-million participants, while cross country skiing was down 56.5 percent, with one-million total.

The complete NSGA Sports Participation studies will be available at the end of the month.