I reckon that is not a bad guess-timate
How Many people playing polo world wide?
I've heard estimates between 4,500 - 30,000 polo players around the globe. What's your best guess and how did you arrive at that number?
Sorry Kenny, but you need to define polo. hardcourt bike polo, grass polo, horse polo, water polo, are all "polo"s that play into your question, vague as it is.
I figure stehvenzho's estimate to be a good median.
by the way at the time of this posting:
"Who's new
* fathertime - Earth"
Our club is lucky to get six on a Sunday. I understand that 15 was probably an average but I think 10(or less) is a better average based on clubs in my area at least. there are a few cities that are pretty big but far more that aren't. Just a guess.
It's cool we'll average at least seven of your clubs out to 15.
boooooooommmmm!!!!!
while averaging 1 game per night
you wanna shit talk, string bean?
we average about 3 games for the bulk of the players who will be at our one court between 7 and 10 at night. plenty of games for those who come out earlier. Timed games help this.
Adaptation sir.
Mad respect Brian
Just stirrin the pot, Seattle is very good for bike polo
we average about 3 games for the bulk of the players who will be at our one court between 7 and 10 at night.
OH... MY... GOD 3 games in 3 hours. If i had even a shred of thought about living in Seattle it's gone now. Nice place to visit. Ottawa is so lucky in that we get more like 3 games an hour against really good players. Hell I'd even take Toronto over that!
Yeah, those were my thoughts exactly. Having 6-8 players showing up enables us to play 4 or 6 games each in an hour. As we get tired, the breaks become longer and drunker. And we have two courts side-by-side just in case.
Yeah, those were my thoughts exactly. Having 6-8 players showing up enables us to play 4 or 6 games each in an hour. As we get tired, the breaks become longer and drunker. And we have two courts side-by-side just in case.
ya if ya had three courts like east van you can play all dy and all night better then the east coast
could be wrong but i think there are like approximately 3500 profiles on lobp. i'd say 4500 would be close for hardcourt players if that number is correct
How does this number take retired players into account?
almost 4000 now, but i would guess 1/3 aren't "active" players. That said, i think less than half the active polo players in the world have accounts on LOBP. So we end up with about 5000.
Stevenso's estimated average is about the same as what the NAH survey revealed last year, 15 is about average, in North America anyway.
Not enough.
We have 75 committed players in London (18 teams for the 2011/12 Winter league plus the subs and beginners), but could list in excess of 150 players (the ones that come and go).
i wanna move to london.
i wanna move to london.
Our biggest problem is that we have too many hosers in the polo scene here. Maybe you could help us, in which case you would be more than welcome.
Ship Max back to East Van since he's the biggest hoser in London.
the fact that it's not just pick up but they have a league, while we have a website that says league but not one. wait i need more rum.
London looks set to add another 100 players (minimum) to the mix in 2012... a school youth league (13 schools with at least a team each) is currently being pulled together by Josh (when he's not daylighting on kid's TV shows), they're the future of the sport!
Obviously there's no simple number, and lots of ways to go about guessing. LOBP regs is good starting point data. Seems the larger clubs have lower proportion registered here. No way i'd believe this forum could be used to rep Asia or S. America.
Why are you asking? Pure intellectual curiosity?
there's a five page paper due in class tomorrow and bike polo is the subject.
I'm curious about how the game is growing or stagnating after what was a relative explosion in numbers a few years ago. I'm also curious what leads to cities like London having such a thriving scene vs cities where the sport dwindles. I wonder if this is a reflection of the larger bike scene in various cites or if it is more to do with facilities available. I'm interested to analyse the growth of bike polo to predict where it is heading. With all the regulars and casual players in East Van I would guess we have around 40 - 45 players here. I think the new court built by the city here has helped moderately with attracting new players and renewed interest from long time players.
I'm also interested from the perspective of promoting the sport. For example the Crazy Canucks are seeking sponsorship to go to NA's and worlds this year. It might help if teams could quote big numbers of people who are playing and point to the continuing growth of the sport.
I don't want to parrot an idea that's already come up, but It also might help if NAH created a system (IN 2013) for getting newcomers to buy in (paid membership?) and that way we can state how many new people we get, and how many people are routine members, which is an important stat to have for sponsors. (and Crazy Canucks would stand to reap the most as the 2011-2012 champions of the world)
It's not entirely attractive to tell a sponsor that, hey, their sponsorship will be seen by somewhere around 500-5000 people who pay attention to bike polo. Think of skateboarding, as it blew up, sponsors could expect their brand to be seen by 5000 new people a day and as it went on, millions of kids would learn the brands of skateboarding each day through videos, tournaments, and advertisement.
By creating a new membership base, we can immediately expose them to the sponsors and in turn, have sponsors come to us.
(although we will always be a DIY community, which means it's less likely that we'll say, hey you're a new comer, buy an ___ brand mallet and more likely that we'll say hey, go to the hardware store and buy this stuff or just straight up sell them newbie mallets).
this is all loosely speaking, nothing will change in 2012, but I would hope that it becomes a strong agenda point for 2013. I also understand there's a thread for gettign sponsorships right now, but this seemed like a good place to put my thoughts down.
Are you proposin a fun tax or something, Maxxx?
Anyone know who the disembodied first person of the Crazy Canucks is ... ?
"They were good but were not used to any physical play. I’m sure they are now. Congrats"
... and clear the table ...
http://crazycanucks.tumblr.com/post/15968430097/results-of-the-london-in...
Heh, fun taxxx by the Maxxx? you must pay to play, or else nobody will play with you.
in all honesty, I am just saying that, based on what Kenny is telling us, the Canucks want to make sponsoring them a 'must-do' thing for organizations that they approach. But as the sport they are attempting to appear top'o'the'world(ma!) of is still loosely organized and remains such, most sponsors will probably not find much incentive to pay money for a low level of coverage.
but if I ran a company, I'd gladly pay the canucks to appear in a commercial (even if 99% of the people watching the commercial didn't know who they were) because it'd be hilarious to see them on t.v. they're a fun bunch, classy world champs, and deserve nothing but the best. until 2012-13 worlds is here that is.. ;)
-max
I think you're on it man. Kenny and Max ( not you tripleX, nor ye "deported fauxser" but the Northern Standard associate Max ) are potential sponsors and are wondering out loud about the potential ability to earn back the costs of flying dudes with kick ass bikes and mallets around the worlds. ($$$)
DIY / crowd sourced market research ...
Northern Standard / NOD / MKE / Fixcraft may be the next O'Neal ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Neill_(brand)
Devin
was designed with the idea that these figures would no longer be guessing but actual truths.
thus it is important for all playing members of bike polo to sign up.
give a quantitative look and the stats for bike polo.
working on a worldwide look now. it's going. sign up. it's free. do it. find out exactly how many people play and where, how far they choose to travel, genders [if they choose to identify themselves], etc.
While I like this idea, i imagine it will be a better quantifier of how many play tournament level bike polo. As for local polo, only way to do this would be to have a census or reporting of players from the individual club reps, as they should be the ones knowing how many are involved in their club.
I think 100 - 120 active players (play over twice/week and entering one or more tournament/year), 100 - 200 non active players (play once/week or less) in Japan.
I think 100 - 120 active players (play over twice/week and entering one or more tournament/year), 100 - 200 non active players (play once/week or less) in Japan.
shit riki how do you get a game in with all those people
About 50 active players in Poland. Although the number may be a little less in the winter, while in summer many more people show up.
in Budapest maybe 8-9 active players. (active means: plays ones a week and go, or want to go to tournament) and we play only on sundays.
at middle of the summer sometimes play twice a week.
In Kyiv we have a crew that consists of 5 active players and 3-5 game-to-game players.
In Area 51 it's still just me playing.
In Melbourne we have between 15 to 30 players regularly on Sundays, it's summer here so that helps with numbers. There are another 20 or so that have retired or rarely come anymore
I think Sydney is about the same
Brisbane has some more, like 40 to 50 on Sundays.. lots of games waiting to play
Why not set up a little Google Docs form and each city can add their stats in and we can tally it up?
Here, I made one
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?pli=1&formkey=dGo0aExldy1XV...
Here is the spreadsheet view
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?pli=1&key=0ApxU2ehzhKNPdGo0aExld...
Why not set up a little Google Docs form and each city can add their stats in and we can tally it up?
While this is a good start, it needs more formality behind it. A census requires rigorous collection of data.
Consider the current situation with Euro spots for Worlds. As far as I can telll, decisions were made based on a similar informal survey. Those decisions seem to have led to much controversy.
What if one wanted to know how many students attend school? One wouldn't email teachers a survey or form and then take the results at face value. It's not that easy.
Hey Joel
Due to the loose nature of polo I don't see how we can achieve anything like that unless we create some strict infrastructure and verification procedures
At the moment it's all a trust exercise
Perhaps a country will have a Representative who can verify the number of players in each city, or at least two players from each city submit their figures and if they are within a percentage tolerance of each other it's accepted, otherwise rejected for resubmission
Each country representative could have a LoBP account and will be accountable through the process
Just an idea.. what were you thinking?
I'd just like to say that taking the number of accounts in lobp when calculating the number of players is not a good measure.
At least, i'm pretty sure that most of the bike polo players in Lisbon do not have an account here.
I looked at the Brisbane account, and there are thirty members on LOBP, but about half of this are active players. Only a third of our active players have accounts.
Sydney has 40 active players but only about 6 of these have accounts on LOBP.
Most of the 41 members of the Sydney group on LOBP have never even played in Sydney
all the clubs have emails..some one send out a mass email asking how many players are active in each club..
So far so good,
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGo0aExldy1XV3l4N3l...
City, Country, Players
Szeged Hungary 12
Washington, DC USA 20
Melbourne Australia 30
Charlottesville USA 8
Memphis USA 13
Pittsburgh USA 15
Sydney Australia 40
Brisbane Australia 54
Christchurch New Zealand 22
Some more entries are in
City, Country, Players
Szeged Hungary 12
Washington, DC USA 20
Melbourne Australia 30
Charlottesville USA 8
Memphis USA 13
Pittsburgh USA 15
Sydney Australia 40
Brisbane Australia 54
Christchurch New Zealand 22
saskatoon, sk canada 12
Geneva Switzerland 30
Buenos Aires Argentina 50
Grenoble France 12
Rouen France 15
Karlsruhe Germany 25
Geneva Switzerland 25
villa constitucion argentina 6
Florida US of A 70
Akita Japan 10
Keep it coming guys!
If you have any updates, just let me know here
Best guess for Halifax, NS, CAN would be 12. 6 dedicated ( which means 6 play in the winter), putting a big push to get new players out this spring.........
I add for italy, i consider "active players" those who play at least 1 time per week.
Vicenza Italia 15
Catania Italia 18
Roma Italia 10
Active (dedicated) players in Croatia.
Zagreb, Croatia 9
I definitely want to know what kind of criteria this is. Is it how many different people play polo more than a couple times in a year? Or how many people play polo at least 3 times/month? Or Play every week? Etc...
São Paulo - Brazil 20 regular players
Here in Rosario, Argentina we are 16 active players and 10 of them are really dedicated playing twice a week (Fri and Sun) no matter what, we have 3 - 4 full teams in every practice, also here the summer is ending and we have been playing non stop in really harsh conditions with an average of 35º C (95º F) at 6pm with 90% humidity wich is horrible so we are looking forward for the fall / winter practices since it does not get that cold here.
FRANCE
Toulouse = 20 players (with 4 girls)
Paris = 35 players (with 1 girl)
Rouen = 15 players
Montpellier = 15 players
Perpignan = 15 players
Nantes = 12 players
Caen = 12 players
Angers = 12 players
Dunkerque = 6 players (with 2 girls)
Avignon = 3 players
Grenoble = 12 players
Clermont = 8 players
Lille = 6 players
Strasbourg = 8 players (with 1 girl)
Lyon = 20 players
Nice = 9 players
Bordeaux = 10 players
Nancy = 6 players
Besançon = 8 players
Around 220 players around the country (if you add this list, please remove Grenoble & Rouen from the other one).
Last spring NAH did a survey of clubs in North America. There were 92 responses to the question about club size.
0-4: 8
5-10: 31
11-16: 24
17-22: 21
23-30: 6
31-40: 2
40+: 0
So among those 92 clubs, average club size was about 13 active players.
Assuming that some of the clubs that didn't respond were on the smaller side, but that most clubs have grown in the last year, i'd say it's between 13-15 active players per city. There are now about 175 active clubs (there are 192 listed according to http://leagueofbikepolo.com/clubs).
So close to 2500 in North America?
NAH will hopefully do another survey this year, and also do a better job at getting the results out...
Hey Guys, awesome work. Please everyone add in your clubs/cities to the spreadsheet using this form
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?pli=1&formkey=dGo0aExldy1XV...
Here are the current stats
City, Country, Players
Szeged Hungary 12
Washington, DC USA 20
Melbourne Australia 30
Charlottesville USA 8
Memphis USA 13
Pittsburgh USA 15
Sydney Australia 40
Brisbane Australia 54
Christchurch New Zealand 22
saskatoon, sk canada 12
Geneva Switzerland 30
Buenos Aires Argentina 50
Grenoble France 12
Rouen France 15
Karlsruhe Germany 25
Geneva Switzerland 25
villa constitucion argentina 6
Florida US of A 70
Akita Japan 10
bloomington in usa 15
Manhattan USA 12
Vicenza Italia 15
Roma Italia 10
Catania Italia 18
Catania Italy 18
MODENA ITALY 6
Vercelli Italia 2
PORDENONE ITALY 8
Milano Italy 12
Mantova Italy 7
San Diego California U.S. 17
Los Angeles California U.S. 30+
Resistencia Argentina 10
São Paulo Brasil 30
santiago santiago 25
Valparaíso Chile 3
Columbia, Missouri USA 21
Rosario Argentina 16
Bassano del Grappa italy 2
São Paulo Brasil 20
quito ecuador 15
guadalajara mexico 22
Bergamo Italy 13
nanaimo canada 15
Catania Italia 18
Catania Italy 18
there's a duplicated line
Thanks dude, I have updated the duplicate
Here are the latest numbers
City, Country, Players
Szeged Hungary 12
Washington, DC USA 20
Melbourne Australia 30
Charlottesville USA 8
Memphis USA 13
Pittsburgh USA 15
Sydney Australia 40
Brisbane Australia 54
Christchurch New Zealand 22
saskatoon, sk canada 12
Geneva Switzerland 30
Buenos Aires Argentina 50
Grenoble France 12
Rouen France 15
Karlsruhe Germany 25
Geneva Switzerland 25
villa constitucion argentina 6
Florida US of A 70
Akita Japan 10
bloomington in usa 15
Manhattan USA 12
Vicenza Italia 15
Roma Italia 10
Catania Italia 18
MODENA ITALY 6
Vercelli Italia 2
PORDENONE ITALY 8
Milano Italy 12
Mantova Italy 7
San Diego USA 17
Los Angeles USA 30+
Resistencia Argentina 10
São Paulo Brasil 30
santiago santiago 25
Valparaíso Chile 3
Columbia, Missouri USA 21
Rosario Argentina 16
Bassano del Grappa italy 2
São Paulo Brasil 20
quito ecuador 15
guadalajara mexico 22
Bergamo Italy 13
nanaimo canada 15
Winnipeg Canada 15
Hamburg Germany 15
perpignan france 15
Nice France 10
angers france 15
LYON FRANCE 25
NANTES FRANCE 12
Caen France 15
Toulouse FRANCE 18
perpignan france 15
East Van Canada 40
Vertou France 4
Rouen France 15
Zagreb Croatia 9
Strasbourg, svp re-entrer la numero de les joueurs, c'est une date mais je veux une numero
Strasbourg, could you please re-enter your number of players? It was entered as a date rather than the number of players in your city
Strasbourg france 07/10/2012
William Jr, could you pop those cities in to the form for us? champ
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGo0aExldy1XV3l4N3l...
When we're done I'll send round a copy of the .CSV file so you can dump it into databases or something.. maybe someone good with graphics/javascript could use a map overlay and make dots in each city a size based on the numbers provided here.. IE: city of 6 is a small dot, city of 60 is a big dot
Tell your friends!
These are great numbers. So what are the standards you guys are using to count players? Is it an average of how many players that show up generally? Is it more a count of players that may show up in a month? Is this a count of players that show up pretty much every week?
Since there were no criteria, I just thought to myself, who would call THEMSELVES a polo player in Memphis (and isn't delusional).
I worked out brisbanes number on the players that had been down to play more than three times in the past three months. And as someone said, people who would consider themselves polo players.
these google docs are great, I wonder if there is some way y'all could cross pollinate this info with zach's site hardcourtbikepolo.org. I know he designed it in part as a census box and stats repository. His aim is for players to sign on and register themselves to get a more accurate count of polo communities.
Hi Timtim, yeah if he has some figures I could import them.. happy to send over the findings here also, it's all for polo!
OK there are now 74 cities submitted, we can do some basic statistics
Players 1222 in total
Cities 74
Average 16.51
Median 15
The latest list is here
City, Country, Players
Szeged Hungary 12
Washington, DC USA 20
Melbourne Australia 30
Charlottesville USA 8
Memphis USA 13
Pittsburgh USA 15
Sydney Australia 40
Brisbane Australia 54
Christchurch New Zealand 22
saskatoon, sk canada 12
Geneva Switzerland 30
Buenos Aires Argentina 50
Grenoble France 12
Rouen France 15
Karlsruhe Germany 25
Geneva Switzerland 25
villa constitucion argentina 6
Florida US of A 70
Akita Japan 10
bloomington in usa 15
Manhattan USA 12
Vicenza Italia 15
Roma Italia 10
Catania Italia 18
MODENA ITALY 6
Vercelli Italia 2
PORDENONE ITALY 8
Milano Italy 12
Mantova Italy 7
San Diego USA 17
Los Angeles USA 30+
Resistencia Argentina 10
São Paulo Brasil 30
santiago santiago 25
Valparaíso Chile 3
Columbia, Missouri USA 21
Rosario Argentina 16
Bassano del Grappa italy 2
São Paulo Brasil 20
quito ecuador 15
guadalajara mexico 22
Bergamo Italy 13
nanaimo canada 15
Winnipeg Canada 15
Hamburg Germany 15
perpignan France 15
Nice France 10
angers France 15
Strasbourg France 8
Lyon France 25
Nantes France 12
Caen France 15
Toulouse France 18
East Van Canada 40
Vertou France 4
Rouen France 15
Zagreb Croatia 9
Montréal Canada 15
East van Canada 35
Brussels Belgium 15
Paris France 35
Montpellier France 15
Nantes France 12
Caen France 12
Dunkerque France 6
Avignon France 3
Clermont France 8
Lille France 8
Bordeaux France 10
Nancy France 6
Besançon France 8
Mankato, MN USA 18
Boston USA 17
There are a few duplicates, like East Van. Could someone let me know if it's 35 or 40 players?
It's not a seasonal game for us, we play every week of the year. The attendance for the last 3 (local) tournaments we did were 7 teams. Although there more players that come and go, around 12 players are consistent in SJU. The other city (Ponce) is about 7 consistent players.
376 clubs 15 players per club = 5640 players.