Sport and recreation injury statistics
Find statistics on injury claims for injuries that happened while playing sport.
- 2024 injury costs
- 2024 new and active claims
- Sports claims and costs by year from 2015 to 2024
- New sport injury claims by common team sports and individual sports for the years 2022, 2023 and 2024
- Regional breakdown of sports claims
- Caveats to this data
2024 injury costs
$1,007,783,057
The costs of all active claims in 2024
New claims
486,888
in 2024
Active claims
585,064
in 2024
Sports claims and costs by year
| Year | New claims | Active claims | Cost of active claims |
| 2015 | 489,849 | 550,802 | $511,103,229 |
| 2016 | 501,701 | 569,353 | $544,776,783 |
| 2017 | 486,317 | 556,555 | $571,957,548 |
| 2018 | 468,663 | 547,210 | $612,890,189 |
| 2019 | 455,384 | 537,428 | $621,455,738 |
| 2020 | 402,809 | 486,282 | $633,374,728 |
| 2021 | 418,173 | 507,544 | $694,664,634 |
| 2022 | 421,623 | 502,066 | $731,849,592 |
| 2023 | 452,794 | 539,962 | $839,152,304 |
| 2024 | 486,888 | 585,064 | $1,007,783,057 |
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.
- '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.