Are there more skateboarders than there were five years ago or less? It seems like there are less these days, so we’re going to the data pile to see what we can pull from there.
Let’s dive in!
We currently have 133,050 entries logged from 10,276 skateboarding competitions on 35,366 profiles.
We took a look at the rates at which skaters return to skateboarding contests over the years.
Pre-pandemic, it was a little over 60% of skaters in contests coming back the following year to skate at least one more. We recovered nicely after the pandemic where the percentage of returning skaters is right above 60%, a decline from 2023’s high of 66% returning.
Additionally, after 2023, the total number skaters attending contests dropped along with that return percentage as you can see in the Unique Participants bar chart above.
The data really starts to get interesting when you break it down by country.
For this excercise, we’re looking at it this way:
- Out of 29,667 skaters that have skated a contest since 2017:
- Take any skater that has NOT been in a contest in the last three years
- AND has skated at least one in the prior years before that
- That criteria gets us 19,073 skaters. We refer to them as "goners."
- That’s a 64% rate of goners over the last several years.
Where did they go? That’s not so easy to determine, but, we can easily take a look at where they’re from.
Below are all the countries where at least 50 skaters participated in contests since 2017.
The USA rate of 69% goners is near the overall average rate of 64%.
Look at how low Japan’s rate is at just 27%!
It’s concerning to see Australia at 84% and Mexico at 88% for goners. Also Russia with 251 skaters in contests and having just 3 of them returning in the last year years is a wild 99% rate of goners.
Goners/ Drop Out Rates by Contest Series
We have a tool that lets you report on contest participation by series for the thousands of events we log and track. Let’s take a look at a few key ones.Tampa Am
Tampa Am has had 913 unique skaters in it since 2017. The rate of them returning each year has declined from the high 40’s to the high 30’s, with 39% of 2023’s participants returning in 2024.
Damn Am
Damn Am is a series that leads to Tampa Am. There have been 1,395 participants since 2017. After pausing for two years during the pandemic, a decent rate of returning skaters was achieved at 44%. In 2024, however, only 27% of the skaters from 2023 came back.
The Boardr Series
Taking a look at our own series which consists of all ages and skills contests primarily in the south east United States. With 2,498 participants since 2017, The Boardr Series has seen similar drops in rate of returning skaters, with just 23% of the skaters in 2023 returning to skate in 2024.
Exposure
Finally, let’s take a look at Exposure, the annual all women’s contest in Southern California with 494 unique participants since 2017.
Exposure only lost 40% of the skaters from 2023 in the 2024 event were 60% of them returned.
Deep dive into all the other series in skateboarding like CASL, Best Foot Forward, SPoT All Ages, etc at our reporting tool on skateboarding competition participation.
Conclusion
It certainly appears skateboarding participation is declining, especially for formal competitions. We believe it’s a combination of the economy, interest in skateboarding in general, partially a lack of structure in nationwide and global skateboarding paths in competition, and more.
Find out where we’re at next with all these skateboarding events at TheBoardr.com/events.