USTA Adult League Participation 2013 thru 2019 - The decline in unique players continues

With 2019 USTA League Nationals complete, we can begin looking at some statistics for 2019 and how it compares with prior years.

For this analysis, I'm looking at unique players that played a match in the Adult leagues which includes 18 & Over, 40 & Over, 55 & Over and 65 & Over during each ratings year, which is roughly November thru October.

This does not include any participants in Mixed, Combo, Tri-Level or other secondary leagues.  This is the same analysis I've done in past years.

Here goes, first participation across all the aforementioned divisions.

We see the decline of the past 5 years continues.  What was 276K participants has dropped to 254K in 2019 or 8%, which is down 3,400 from 2018.  And the decline is for both men and women, the men dropping 1,400 since 2018 and the women 2,000.

But this is across all divisions mentioned above.  Let's look at the numbers by division to see if the trends are consistent.

Here is just 18 & Over.

The decline here is consistent with the broader trend, 213K in 2013 down to 191K in 2019, down 10%.  The drop from 2018 to 2019 is just under 4K though.

On to 40 & Over.

Here we see growth!  Part of this is perhaps due to 40 & Over being a new division in 2013, but it is up from 117K then to 131K in 2019, up 12%.  Participation actually dropped 200 from 2017 to 2018, but is back to growing again up 1,700 in the past year.

With this division growing, it seems a bit odd that the USTA took the step to change the standard format from 5 courts to 4 courts for 2020, reducing playing opportunity 13% overall and 50% for singles players in this division.  It will be interesting to see what happens to participation in 2020.

Last, we'll look at 55 & Over.

There is growth here too!  Participation is up from 48K in 2013 to 55K in 2019, up 15%.  This growth has remained pretty steady year to year as well.

The working hypothesis I've floated in previous years is that the USTA membership is aging and that fueled the growth in 40 & Over and 55 & Over, as more players became eligible, but those players have begun to play less 18 & Over and they are not being replaced by new under 40 players.  What do you think?  Is this the case?

Note: These are statistics from the data I've gathered and may not exactly match the USTA's data or they may report numbers using different criteria than I am.