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Between 2023 and 2024, employment in the sports sector rose by 6.5%, reaching 1.6 million employees last year.<\/p>\n
This is the third year in a row where employment in sport has seen growth, a positive trend attributed to recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, according to Eurostat.<\/p>\n
Sweden leads the way, with 1.50% of its workforce being employed in the sports industry, followed by Denmark with 1.37% and Spain with 1.17%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By contrast, Romania (0.21%), Bulgaria (0.44%), and Czechia (0.47%) have the lowest share of people working in this sector.<\/p>\n
Compared with the age structure of the total employed population, there is a higher percentage of youth employed in sport than the EU average for all other sectors.<\/p>\n
Last year, more than one-third (36.8%) of all employees were aged between 15 and 29 years old.<\/p>\n
In seven EU countries, at least 40% of people employed in sport were young people: Denmark (52.7%), Finland (49.7%), Sweden (49.2%), the Netherlands (46.3%), Belgium (43.5%), Spain (43.5%) and Ireland (43.2%).<\/p>\n
In Bulgaria and Spain, that figure was at least three times higher than in other sectors of employment.<\/p>\n
Women in the sports sector<\/p>\n
The sports industry has long been one of the areas where gender inequality is most visible.<\/p>\n
Only at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games was gender parity achieved among athletes, with an equal number of men and women competing for the first time.<\/p>\n
Yet the gender gap in sport employment in the EU has widened since 2011.<\/p>\n
In 2024, more than 900,000 men were working in sport, compared to just over 700,000 women.<\/p>\n
In most EU countries, men outnumbered women in sport-related jobs, with the biggest gender gaps in employment being observed in Cyprus (where 69.4% of employees were men) and Belgium (66.8%).<\/p>\n
However, in three EU countries, there were more women than men employed in sport (Latvia with 53.3%, Sweden with 51.4%, and the Netherlands with 50.8%).<\/p>\n
The gender disparity is also evident in leadership roles.<\/p>\n