The bar chart illustrates the number of adults participating in major sports in 1997 and 2017. The sports that are being compared are tennis, basketball, cricket, golf, swimming, football and rugby.
Overall, the highest figure was recorded by tennis in 1997, as well as in 2017 with around 50,000 adults taking part in the sport. Meanwhile, the lowest number was Cricket in 2017 with just 7000 people in the sport.
While the high popularity of Tennis just slightly increased over the years, football, rugby and basketball faced an significant growth. The hobbies experienced a rise of over 10,000 participants each. In 2017, basketball was played by 22,000 people, football faced 48,000 participants and rugby peaked at 49,000 adults in the sport. On the other hand crickets popularity fell and decreased from 26,000 to around 7000 participants in 2017.
Similar to Tennis, the numbers of participants in golf and swimming remained relatively stable. In both sports, there were around 30,000 to 35,000 participants in 1997 and 2017. Even when some sports faced major changes in popularity, tennis, golf and swimming could keep their numbers on a consistent level.