This study, conducted annually by American Sports Data, Inc. (ASD), uses a nationwide sample of 15,000 households from the consumer mail panel of NFO Research — the same panel that USIA used for tracking the results of the industry marketing program. ASD reports on participation in 58 activities, including a lot of exercise and fitness-related ones, such as Resistance Machine Exercise, Stair-Climbing Machine Exercise and the like.
The value to the ski marketer of such research is that it profiles the skier as a member of the American public. These aren’t skiers as found at any one resort on any one day, but a universe that reflects the facts about all skiers.
This year’s results suggest no changes in the trendlines we have all become used to for skiers. The basic demographics of age, sex and income are familiar (Table I).
| Downhill Skiing | X-C Skiing | |
|---|---|---|
| Sex | ||
| Male | 57.1% | 51.8% |
| Female | 42.9 | 48.2 |
| Age | ||
| 6-11 | 7.0% | 7.4% |
| 12-17 | 19.9 | 12.3 |
| 18-24 | 21.3 | 13.5 |
| 25-34 | 17.4 | 24.6 |
| 35-44 | 18.4 | 22.0 |
| 45-54 | 7.8 | 10.8 |
| 55-64 | 3.0 | 4.1 |
| 65+ | 5.2 | 5.4 |
| Household Income | ||
| Under $15,000 | 6.9% | 12.8% |
| $15,000 – $24,999 | 10.6 | 13.2 |
| $25,000 – $34,999 | 7.1 | 14.9 |
| $35,000 – $49,999 | 23.3 | 23.3 |
| $50,000+ | 52.1 | 35.8 |
The good news and bad news of our sport are again clearly visible — which doesn’t necessarily mean they are accepted by those who insist otherwise.
New Skier Growth
The good news is that the sport continues to attract new participants at a very healthy rate. For 1989, there were about 2.5 million who downhill skied for the first time, or 17.2 percent of all downhill skiers. Cross country got 1.2 million new participants, or 18.1 percent of their total participants. The figures are in the same ballpark as those for previous years and represent an entry rate that existed before the industry’s demand-building efforts. The bad news is, of course, that a lot of people try it and don’t come back. The best evidence is that this figure is just over 50 percent.
Another piece of interesting good news in the ASD study is the level of enthusiasm and loyalty our sport enjoys. Respondents were asked to select which of their reported activities was their favorite. A hefty 22.3 percent voted for downhill skiing. Comparing this to other activities that attract dedicated aficionados, we see sailing (16.2), fly fishing (13.5), tennis (15.1), boardsailing (8.4), snowboarding (8.,8). Only golf, with 27.7 percent, beat downhill skiing. Candor makes me add that only 9.2 percent of cross country skiing participants chose it as their favorite.
The Frequent Skier
Since one of the industry’s aims is to increase frequency of participation, it is useful to look at the ASD data that breaks out the frequent skier — defined as the person who participates 15 or more times in a year. There are clear distinctions to be made with the frequent alpine skier segment, which numbers 1.8 million, or 12.4 percent of all skiers. The distinctions are logical and predictable.
Age and income are the biggest factors. For instance, 54 percent of all skiers are in the 18-34 age bracket, while only 38.7 percent of frequent skiers are. There are just too many constraints — time, income, children for starters — for many of them to be frequent skiers. With income, 41.4 percent of all downhill skiers report household incomes of under $35,000, but among frequent skiers, only 24.6 percent are, while a whopping 52.1 percent of frequent skiers report household incomes of $50,000 and up. If you want to be a frequent skier, money helps.
For cross country, the number of frequent participants is quite a bit smaller — just 8.8 percent, or 574,000. They seem to be largely from the 18-44 age bracket.
Skier Visit Totals
Returning to participation of all downhill skiers, we find an average of 6.9 days reported skied by the more than 14.4 million participants (Table II). This multiplies out to about 100 million skier visits, and is, of course, inconsistent with our industry count of around 50 million. There are many factors at work here. First of all, every piece of research where the public is asked to recall their ski participation ends up being overstated by a factor of between 1.8-to-1 and 2 to 1. It’s a given. The research is still useful, because from year to year the exaggeration factor is pretty constant. The probability is that the exaggeration — “upward bias” — is what the pros like to call it — occurs in the higher frequencies claimed, because a person who actually skis only two or three times will probably remember accurately, whereas someone who really skis 14 days may well guesstimate it higher, especially if it was fun.
| Downhill Skiing (%) | X-C Skiing (%) | |
|---|---|---|
| Days of Participation — 1989 | ||
| 1-3 | 47.5% | 57.8% |
| 4-6 | 21.1 | 16.7 |
| 7-11 | 14.4 | 12.4 |
| 12-24 | 10.0 | 8.0 |
| 25-49 | 4.0 | 2.3 |
| 50+ | 1.0 | 1.3 |
| Average No. days last 12 months | 6.9 | 5.8 |
Another factor is that the ski professional can skew numbers. With the ASD panel, for instance, every respondent represents 12,486 individuals, so a professional ski patrolman reporting 78 days of skiing can really skew the numbers.
Can such research be used, then, with any confidence? Emphatically yes. Valuable insights are there. But frequency projections should not be made unless the gross figures are adjusted to fit industry knowledge — to say nothing of common sense.
Crossover Stats
Other incidental data of interest in the ASD study include cross-country crossover statistics: 32.8 percent of cross-country skiers also ski alpine; 14.8 percent of alpine skiers also ski cross-country. Among snowboarders, 30.3 percent ski downhill and 7.9 percent cross-country. Only 3.2 percent of downhill skiers reported snowboarding, and a minute 1.9 percent of cross-country skiers. The study found 1.5 million snowboarders in 1989, over half of whom were new to the sport in that year.
Where the Skiers Are
Finally, if you were Marketing Committee chairman Bill Stenger and wanted to reach out to other sports universes where skiing participation is high, which sports would they be? According to the ASD study, here are the top ten activities, both by percentage who ski and also by the numbers of skiers participating in activities (See Table III on page 33).
Niche marketers, take note!
| Activity | Percentage who ski | Number of participants who ski (000) |
|---|---|---|
| Board Sailing | 40 | 452 |
| Ice Hockey | 38.4 | 801 |
| Scuba | 35.9 | 856 |
| Mountain Biking | 32.9 | 1,065 |
| Paint Ball | 32.7 | 322 |
| Water Skiing | 32.5 | 4,312 |
| Surfing | 32.1 | 324 |
| Snowboarding | 30.3 | 1,543 |
| Sailing | 26.5 | 1,372 |
| Racquetball | 25.6 | 2,669 |
| Running/Jogging | 16.6 | 5,428 |
| Volleyball (hard surface) | 15.4 | 5,005 |
| Tennis | 23.1 | 4,741 |
| Stationary Cycling | 11.1 | 4,315 |
| Hiking/Backpacking | 17.9 | 3,813 |
| Resistance Machine | 20.7 | 3,671 |
| Touch Football | 15.4 | 3,051 |
| Ice/Figure Skating | 24.7 | 2,526 |
The American Sports Analysis is available from American Sports Data, 234 N. Central Avenue, Hartsdale, N.Y. 10530. There are several price packages available. The cost of the basic report covered above is $275.
A SPECIAL SAM CONTEST
Do-it-yourself Frequency Analysis
A good, round guess for the number of individuals, seven years old and up, who ski in a given year is 14 million. Make that Assumption No. 1. Assumption No. 2 is that this number does not include — and you should not include — “ski professionals” (patrollers, instructors and the like) who, by the nature of their work, may ski almost every day of the season. Assumption No. 3 is that there are 50 million skier visits. (Don’t fight it if you don’t agree; just accept it for the contest as an assumption.) Assumption No. 4 is that you, as a reader of this magazine, are an expert and possessed of an insightful opinion. Your challenge: take the 50 million visits and spread them out among the 14 million skiers so that they all add up.
SAM will publish some of the answers and award prizes. Please include your comments and reasonings. To get you started, SAM proposes the following as a reasonable distribution picture. But the beauty of this contest is that nobody is right, nobody wrong — unless your arithmetic fails you, in which case you will have the judges’ sympathy, but no prize.
| Number of Skiers (millions) | Days Skied | Skier Visits (millions) |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | 1 | 5 |
| 4 | 2 | 8 |
| 2 | 4 (avg) | 8 |
| 1.5 | 7 (avg) | 10.5 |
| 1 | 11 (avg.) | 11 |
| .5 | 15 (avg) | 7.5 |
| 14 million | 3.7 average | 50 million |
Skiing Number One Sport???
Newspaper’s Goof Raises Industry Expectations
“LOVE TO SKI” was the teaser headline on the front page of the August 3 sports section of USA Today. “A survey shows downhill skiing is the USA’s No. 1 recreational sport,” it explained.
This was heady stuff. What did that newspaper know that our industry’s collective marketing brains had apparently not uncovered?
The study on which the paper based its story had been prepared by National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA), but the headline the paper concocted had little to do with the NSGA report, which was a state-by-state indexing of participation in recreational activities. The sort of conclusion the NSGA data allows, according to Thomas B. Doyle, Director of Information and Research, is, “Coloradans are three times as likely to ski as Americans generally.” This comes from a Colorado ski index of 318. In a state with an index of 50, one would say its residents are half as likely as all Americans to ski.
The states with the highest ski indices are: Connecticut (319), Colorado (318), Nevada (310), Utah (275), New Hampshire (260), Wyoming (259), Oregon (246), Massachusetts (237), Montana (222), Rhode Island (188).
Ranking of activities within a state produced some anomalies, such as downhill skiing ranking first in California — ahead of table tennis and hiking. California’s ski index was 158.
Mathematically, the index is obtained by dividing the percentage of people who ski in a state by the percentage that the state’s population is of the U.S. population. So, if two percent of a state’s population were skiers, and that state’s population were one percent of the national population, its skier index would be 200 (2 ÷ 1 x 100), indicating that a resident of that state is twice as likely to ski as Americans generally.
Bottom line: USA Today goofed: we have a way to go before becoming the country’s Number One recreational sport!
