The line charts illustrate the average monthly money that parents in Britain spent on their children’s sports, as well as the number of children taking part in football, swimming, and athletics over the whole 6-year period.
It is clear that there were significant changes shown on these two graphs. Generally speaking, parental expenditure on children’s sports experienced a continuous increase throughout the period. Similarly, participants in three different sports rose considerably, but the most dramatic growth was seen in football participation.
In the year 2008, around 20 pounds per month were spent by British parents on their children’s sporting activities. Over the following six years, the average monthly amount increased constantly by almost 15 pounds, reaching a peak of some 35 pounds at the end of the period.
In terms of participation, the number of children taking part in football was just below 8 million compared to nearly 2 million participants for swimming and 1 million participants for athletics in 2008. During the period shown, while football participation stayed relatively stable at around 8 million children, the two remaining sports experienced substantial rises in participants. In 2014, the figures for swimming almost doubled to nearly 4 million children. At the same time, approximately 5 million children took part in athletics, about 5 times the initial number.