What is the real cost behind playing sports in the UK? Discover the fees behind participating in various sports across the UK, and the actual prices paid to play.
Across the UK, sport is ingrained into the culture wherever you go. Whether it’s football, cricket, or rugby, there’s always at least one sport that people are passionate about. With a deep-rooted role in the UK’s history, sport has become a part of the nation’s identity.
According to a football participation survey by Statista, it’s the most popular team sport in the UK, with about 2.2 million people playing the sport between November 2023 and November 2024. In a similar timeframe, Statista conducted another survey on cricket participation in the UK, recording 358,600 individuals playing, again showing high levels of engagement from the general public.
When playing these sports, though, there are lots of hidden costs that unfortunately mean you can’t just start on a whim. In order to participate, you’ll need equipment such as balls, boots, bats, and sometimes even gloves and other items. This means that with different sports, it may take varying amounts of money to play, potentially preventing some from getting involved.
So, to discover the real fees needed to play in the UK, the team at Betway conducted research into the average price of various pieces of kit and items required to participate in 22 sports. Read below to find out the true cost of playing different sports across the UK.
The varying costs of playing different sports in the UK
As it’s the most popular sport in the UK, we’ll first look at football, viewing how much the total cost comes to with all the items required to play. Overall, there are four items we’ve accounted for: the kit, a pair of boots, goalkeeper gloves, and, of course, a ball. The price of all these items comes to £117, making it the 17th costliest out of all the sports we reviewed. Taking a deeper look into each item here, the priciest were the boots. These came to £62, which was £38 more expensive than the next costliest item, the goalkeeper gloves!
Considered to be the second-most popular sport in the country, cricket falls into eighth place. The sport includes the most items on our list so far, needing nine to begin playing. These items come to a total cost of £396, including a ball, bat, box, gloves, helmet, pads, spikes, stumps, and finally whites. This means that playing cricket costs more than three times as much as football! By far the most expensive thing needed to play cricket is the bat, costing £115, more than double the second most expensive item, the helmet (£57)!
Rugby league and rugby union are also incredibly popular in the UK, with the overall cost to play coming in even higher than football! With both types of rugby, we’ve considered six items that are required to play. This includes a ball, boots, kicking tee, kit, mouthguard, and a scrum cap, totalling £145 and putting them in 16th place. Similarly to football, the most expensive item is the boots, as they’re priced at £54. This is £18 more than the second-priciest item, the scrum cap.
Moving on to another one of the UK’s most revered sports, the cost of darts may surprise you. Though you may think darts doesn’t require many items to begin playing, it’s actually more than just the darts themselves and a dartboard. Playing darts requires six separate items, including the aforementioned darts and a board, alongside flights, an oche, a stand for the board, and stems. This equipment soon racks up the cost to £198, making it more than either football or rugby league/union, placing it 14th in our rankings! Unsurprisingly, the dartboard itself is the most expensive item on the list, contributing £94 of the whole cost.
One of the more up-and-coming sports in the UK is padel, and this is for good reason, as it comes near the bottom of our list in 20th place. Being one of the cheapest sports, padel only costs £82, which is less than half that of darts! Padel only needs three different items to play, including a ball, a racquet, and a shock absorber, with, as you might expect, the racquet being the costliest piece of equipment. It makes up the majority of the expenses to play, coming in at £65.
Another sport among the ten most expensive to play in the UK is hockey, which places in ninth. Like cricket, we’ve considered the cost of nine different pieces of equipment needed to play, which combine to make a similar total cost of £349. Looking at all items for hockey, the goalkeeper leg guards are priced at £68, meaning they’re the most expensive.
The UK’s most and least costly sports to participate in
Finally, let’s look at the most expensive and least expensive sports to play from our research.
Topping the charts is cycling, racking up a total cost of £2,302 after all equipment has been bought. This includes five items, with the bike costing a whopping £2,097 out of the total!
The least expensive sport to get involved with in the UK is swimming/diving, with a combined cost of £50. These sports only require three items to participate, including goggles, a head cap, and a swimming costume. The equipment with the largest associated cost here is the goggles, as they’re priced at £27.
Coming in at a close second cheapest is tennis, with the items here only reaching a total of £57.
What does the cost of playing sports in the UK mean for participation?
There is evidently a large disparity in the costs involved with playing different sports in the UK. Its most popular sport, football, is certainly one of the more affordable options after placing 17th. Other popular sports, such as cycling, are much more expensive, though, costing more than ten times as much!
These prices can create barriers for certain groups to get involved and participate. With inflation and the cost-of-living crisis creating pressures, entry costs to play sports in the UK are amplified. But, with things such as second-hand equipment, getting involved can be more affordable than it may appear.
Overall, these costs shouldn’t cast a shadow on the physical, mental, and social benefits of participating in sports, and with extremely affordable options such as swimming and tennis, everyone can find a sport accessible to them, no matter their background.
Methodology
To estimate the cost of taking part in different sports, we built a list of essential equipment for each sport, from football boots and cricket bats to golf clubs, ski gear, and curling stones.
We then collected pricing data from Google Shopping (UK) for every item on the list. For each piece of equipment, we used a specific Google Shopping search term designed to return the most relevant results for that sport and product type.
Where Google Shopping showed a “Popular options” module, we recorded the top 10 product listings shown there. If no “Popular options” module was available, we used the first 10 product listings from the general Google Shopping results instead.
For each result, we captured the visible product information available on the page, including:
Product name
Listed price
Retailer
Other visible listing details (where available)
We then used those results to calculate the total average equipment cost per sport by summing the average price of each required item.
This gave us a sport-by-sport estimate of how much it costs to buy the essential equipment needed to take part.
Cleaning and consistency
Searches were tailored to each sport and item to keep results as relevant as possible.
In cases where irrelevant products appeared, results were manually checked and cleaned. For example, for curling – broom/brush – unrelated hair products appeared in the wider results, so only the first three clearly relevant curling product listings were retained for that item.
All base pricing was collected in pounds sterling (£) using UK Google Shopping results.
