Introduction
Millions of Australians participate in sport and other forms of physical activity. Just over 85% of Australians aged 15 or over participated in some form of sport or physical activity at least once during 2024–25, and 49% participated at least 3 times a week, according to the Australian Sports Commission’s (ASC) AusPlay survey (ASC 2025).
While participation has many health and social benefits, it also involves a risk of injury. The AusPlay survey suggests that about 19% of participants aged 18 and over were injured while participating in some form of sport or physical activity in 2024–25 (ASC 2025).
Sometimes, an injury will lead to a hospital admission. This report analyses the 61,000 sports injuries that were serious enough to require a person to stay in hospital in 2024–25. It looks at the demographics of those injured and the types of injuries that led to hospitalisation, including 10-year trends.
Participation and injury rates are presented for a range of sports categories. Those categories with some of the highest injury hospitalisations are discussed in more detail, including basketball, cycling, equestrian activities, various football codes, ice and snow sports, netball, roller sports, soccer and wheeled motor sports.
Key findings
In 2024–25:
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70%
of all sports injury hospitalisations were males (42,800 cases), with the highest rate among males aged 15–19 (around 860 hospitalisations per 100,000 population).
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Falls were the leading cause of sports injury hospitalisations, accounting for almost one-third (or 19,200 cases) of all hospitalisations.
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Cycling had the highest proportion of sports injury hospitalisations (12% or 7,200 cases), but is also a popular sport among Australians, increasing the likelihood of injury.
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Fractures accounted for more than half of all sports injury hospitalisations, most often to the arm or shoulder.
This report is part of a broader project funded by the Australian Sports Commission- external site opens in new window to improve the availability of information on injuries that arise from participating in physical activity, such as sport and active recreation. See the National Sports Injury Data Strategy for more information on this project.
For other AIHW-related reports, see the Related material page, as well as resources referenced in the Clearinghouse for Sport.
This report uses admitted patient care data from the National Hospital Morbidity Database (NHMD), and sports participation estimates from the AusPlay survey (ASC 2025). It does not include information on people who sought treatment at hospital emergency departments, general practitioner clinics, sports medicine centres, or from allied health practitioners such as physiotherapists as national data for these services is not readily available at this time.
National Hospital Morbidity Database
Data about sports injury hospitalisations are drawn from admitted patient care records in the NHMD. If enough detail about the cause of the injury was obtained from the patient, then a particular type of sports activity will be assigned.
A single injury can lead to a person having more than one episode of care in hospital. The methodology for this report was designed to minimise double counting, where possible.
A person can be hospitalised with multiple injuries, some of which will be more serious than others. This report only presents data about the main injury – known as the principal diagnosis.
AusPlay
AusPlay is the largest and most comprehensive survey on sports and physical activity participation in Australia. It reaches an annual target sample size of 40,000 adults (aged 15 and over) who have been living in Australia for at least 12 months. Survey results include participation estimates in a range of activities, as well as information on the type of sports injury and body part injured. AusPlay defines an injury as all types of physical damage (such as to the skin, tendon, muscle, bone or brain) sustained while competing, training or participating in sport or physical activity that interferes with a participant's ability to play, train or exercise for any period of time.
This report only includes estimates for participants aged 15 and over.
Data limitations
These data sources do not fully capture either sports injury hospitalisations or sports participation in Australia. For hospital admissions, injuries are attributed to a sports activity if clinicians are informed about the activity and record it, but this will not always happen. Therefore, the sports injuries reported here are likely to be an undercount.
The AusPlay survey is completed by people who are members of online research panels, who may be less physically active than the rest of the population (who may spend less time on technology). As a result, rates of sports injury hospitalisations per participant in the Sports participation and injury chapter of this report should be treated as estimates, and comparisons made with this in mind. For more details, see AusPlay’s technical documents and supporting information.
What we don’t know
This report is limited to injuries that were serious enough to require a stay in hospital. This excludes injuries that were treated in the emergency department only, at a GP clinic, or by an allied health practitioner such as a physiotherapist, because there is no national dataset for these services.
Only a small proportion of sports injuries likely result in a hospital stay, and these are typically the more severe injuries. The AusPlay survey estimated that around 19% of participants in 2024–25 were injured while participating in a sport or some other form of physical activity (ASC 2025). A New South Wales Population Health Survey from 2005 estimated that less than 3% of organised sport injuries in persons aged 16 and over lead to a hospital admission (Mitchell et al. 2008).
It is also possible that many injuries that develop over time might have been caused by sports participation, including chronic injuries, but were not directly linked to a particular sport. If a person seeks treatment months or years after they played sport, they may not report the connection between their injury and a sport to their clinician, or it may not be recorded.
For more on the scope, accuracy, and comparability of these data sets, see the technical notes.
Australian Sports Commission (ASC) (2025) AusPlay, ASC, Australian Government, accessed 22 April 2026.
Mitchell R, Boufous S & Finch CF (2008) Sport/leisure injuries in New South Wales: Trends in sport/leisure injury hospitalisations (2003-2005) and the prevalence of non-injury hospitalisations (2005), New South Wales Injury Risk Management Research Centre, The University of New South Wales, accessed 21 April 2026.