Sport and recreation injury statistics
Find statistics on injury claims for injuries that happened while playing sport.
Data covers the date range, 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2025.
- 2025 injury costs
- 2025 new and active claims
- Sports claims and costs by year from 2016 to 2025
- New sport injury claims by common team sports and individual sports for the years 2023, 2024 and 2025
- Regional breakdown of sports claims
- Caveats to this data
2025 injury cost
$1,078,956,703
The costs of all active claims in 2025
New claims
496,280
in 2025
Active claims
602,740
in 2025
Sports claims and costs by year
| Year | New claims | Active claims | Cost of active claims |
| 2016 | 501,750 | 569,354 | $544,776,828 |
| 2017 | 486,584 | 556,556 | $571,957,603 |
| 2018 | 468,226 | 547,209 | $612,890,155 |
| 2019 | 455,348 | 537,426 | $621,454,552 |
| 2020 | 402,801 | 486,282 | $633,384,194 |
| 2021 | 418,141 | 507,545 | $694,658,097 |
| 2022 | 421,612 | 502,067 | $731,857,332 |
| 2023 | 452,884 | 539,959 | $839,159,152 |
| 2024 | 487,004 | 585,095 | $1,007,701,178 |
| 2025 | 496,280 | 602,740 | $1,078,956,703 |
Regional breakdown of sports claims
Did you know – Canterbury has the second-highest number of claims relating to rugby?
More information
Find out about the work we're involved in to prevent injuries while playing sport:
- A calendar year is 1 January to 31 December.
- This report includes accepted sport-related injury claims managed by ACC.
- Declined claims and claims managed by accredited employers aren't included.
- New claims is the count of claims which were lodged with ACC between 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2025. The lodgement date may be any date after the accident occurred.
- Data were extracted on 12 January 2026 and may differ if re-run at a later date.