Softball Australia has reported that softball membership in Australia has grown by 2.5% over the last 12 months. Softball in Australia also experienced 2.05% growth compared to the most recent COVID unaffected membership period in 2019-20.
After generally being in decline since 1996, it is also the first discernible growth since 2013-2016, when membership plateaued over a four-year period.
Almost all States and Territories in the country experienced strong growth over the last 12 months, spearheaded by Queensland (13% growth), WA (11%), and Victoria and SA (both 10%). Five out of eight States/Territories also achieved membership growth in the last 24 months, compared to the last COVID unaffected data set.
“This is a fantastic result and great news for the sport in Australia,” said Softball Australia National Participation Manager Nick Frayne. “With new participation programs like Home Run Heroes, better reporting and data insights available through RevSport, and more flexible softball opportunities across the board post-COVID, I’m optimistic that we now have a strong pathway to grow membership and become sustainable at all levels in the future.”
Amongst other key areas, Softball Australia will now embark on a large-scale project to look at how the slowpitch/social format of softball can be further embedded into the Association and Club network to stimulate growth.
"Social and unstructured sport has overtaken traditional models of competitive sport, and the slowpitch format is the perfect complement to traditional fastpitch softball within our Associations and Clubs,” Frayne said.
