Sport and recreation injury statistics
Find statistics on injury claims for injuries that happened while playing sport.
- 2021 injury costs
- 2021 new and active claims
- Sports claims and costs by year - 2015 to 2021
- New sport injury claims by common team sports - 2019, 2020, and 2021
- New sport injury claims by individual sports - 2019 to 2021
- Claims for most common sports for 2020 and 2021, by sex
- Regional breakdown of sports claims
- Common types of injuries for sport
- Caveats to this data
New claims
Active claims
Sports claims and costs by year
| Year | New claims | Active claims | Cost of active claims |
| 2015 | 487,869 | 548,609 | $508,625,272 |
| 2016 | 499,484 | 566,939 | $542,263,593 |
| 2017 | 484,545 | 554,510 | $569,274,166 |
| 2018 | 467,868 | 546,042 | $611,122,117 |
| 2019 | 455,293 | 537,081 | $620,094,294 |
| 2020 | 402,538 | 485,868 | $631,881,842 |
| 2021 (to 30 Sep) | 341,884 | 427,199 | $524,562,996 |
Regional breakdown of sports claims
Did you know – Canterbury has the second-highest number of claims relating to rugby?
Common types of injuries for sport
Did you know – the most common sports injury is a soft tissue injury? It's an injury to the muscle, ligament, or tendons, usually from a sprain, strain, or contusion.
More information
Find out about the work we're involved in to prevent injuries while playing sport:
'New' claims are counted in the calendar year they were lodged.
'Active' claims have had a payment made on them during that year. Active claims may have been lodged in a different calendar year and can be counted across multiple years.
'Costs' don't include payments made for acute treatment in public hospitals.
A client's age may differ between lodgement date and accident date.
'Region' is based on where the accident happened.
The data was extracted at a point in time and may change if re-run later.