Healthy, Wealthy and Wise: The 2002 Croquet Association Survey of Croquet Players

10 Things You Did Not Know About Croquet Players

1. 48% of croquet players are graduates.
2. 69% have a spouse or partner (with 12% widowed and 7% divorced or separated).
3. 41% of respondents either are or were, before retirement, qualified professionals (doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants, etc.). Managers, both senior and middle, make up a further 25% between them.
4. With computer ownership at 70% and email usage at 60%, croquet players are well above the national averages. Three-quarters of all those who surf the web look at the CA website at least occasionally.
5. 51% of respondents had played croquet "in the garden" (not necessarily their own garden), with a quarter starting in their teens.
6. 62% of all croquet players have introduced at least one friend to the sport (along with 29% who have introduced their spouse or partner, 23% a child, 15% another relation and 13% a workmate).
7. While a third of all croquet players are women, they make up only 9% of those with a handicap below four.
8. 7% of croquet players have never received any coaching. Of those that have, 88% have received club coaching and 28% have been on a CA course.
9. Over one third of all croquet players also regularly play a recognised mind game, such as bridge, backgammon or chess.
10. 83% of croquet players enjoy a nice bottle of wine.

• Review article as published in The Croquet Gazette, May 2002
• Report summary from the full report
• Full Report in PDF format [305kB]

The CA Marketing Committee was planning a number of projects where an improved understanding of croquet players was important. It was decided to undertake a wide-ranging survey, with the following objectives:

1. To enable the Marketing Committee to better package croquet to appeal to providers of funding (notably Sport England), sponsors, media and potential providers of benefits.
2. To help it to generate more effective recruitment aids for clubs.
3. To help understand the profile of CA Associate members vs. non-members.
4. To provide the foundation for further marketing initiatives.

It was sent to 1300 Associates (from the CA database) and 950 non-Associates (supplied by club secretaries of 38 clubs). The targeted response rate was 20%, but this was comfortably exceeded, as a surprising 1020 (45%) responses were received. There was overwhelming support for the aims of the survey and the way in which it was conducted. There was also a good fit geographically in terms of survey responses and CA statistics.

The project was managed by Kevin Carter whose company, Profundus Consulting Ltd., has considerable experience of organising customer surveys. Advice and support was provided by other members of the Marketing Committee, by Quiller Barrett and by Michael Bird, a further research professional who had experience of organising surveys within a sports association. Considerable assistance was also provided by Nigel Graves, the CA Secretary.

Any subjective views expressed within the report are those of Kevin Carter, the author, and they do not necessarily represent the views of the CA as a whole nor the CA Marketing Committee.

These publications are © The Croquet Association. All rights are reserved and no part of the publications may be copied in full or in part without the prior written consent of The Croquet Association.

The survey data was refreshed by the 2007 survey.