Market segmentation

Why do some people play sport? And why do some simply not want to join in. Sport England has developed nineteen sporting segments to help us understand the nations’ attitudes to sport and motivations for doing it (or not).

For example – Leanne is a Supportive Single – she is the least active segment amongst 18-25 year olds. We know that she is likely to be single, living in private/council rented accommodation and is very likely to have children.  We now also know what motivates her, what brands she aspires to, how we can overcome things that stop her taking part in sport and how to get her involved in sports she likes - such as the gym and keep-fit. From this we can work out which sporting interventions are likely to be more successful for Leanne.

The market segmentation data builds on the results of Sport England’s Active People Survey, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport's Taking Part survey and the Mosaic tool from Experian.

We can use this knowledge to help us influence people and persuade more to take part.  It is part of our drive to get one million people doing more sport by 2012.

The segments can be explored through the following methods: 

• Sport Market Segmentation web tool.  New for the 2010 data refresh is an interactive web tool to analyse segment population and their characteristics at different geographic levels. It is possible to find out what people's sporting habits are in a particular street, community, local authority or region.  The simple and intuitive website presents downloadable results in map, chart and table form.
• Pen Portraits.  Get to know each of the 19 segments better through their individual pen portraits.  The full colour six page pdfs are an excellent way to understand each of our segments from how sporty they are and how satisfied they are with their sporting experience to what else they like to do and how to reach them.  
• Index Tables.  If you want to go further and analyse individual characteristics use the Index Tables. A single Excel workbook provides access to a wealth of information on specific characteristics that define each of our segments.

Please see our 'quick guides' for both National Governing Bodies (NGB) for Sport and Local Authorities/County Sports Partnerships to get up and running with these main outputs.

For more detailed information and case studies see the 'More Detail' section.

To perform analysis within your own business software and combine the segmentation data with your own local information download the raw market segmentation data from the web tool.