I just came across this interesting webpage:
North America, Russia and Japan are as expected. The intra-European statistics surprised me a little though! (Someone show the Swedish federation this...)
Uplifter does software for clubs (including figure skating among other sports) so I am guessing they get their numbers from clients' data, and perhaps some other sources in countries where different software is used. The figures also depend on how you define 'figure skater' - presumably here it means registered club participants who might be testing/competing, so it would include a lot of 'grassroots' skaters. I think it offers an interesting alternative perspective of the sport's global popularity compared to looking at elite competition medal counts, TV viewership, fanbase numbers etc.
How many figure skaters are there in the world?
How many figure skaters are there in the world? That's what we've spent dozens of hours trying to determine. See the results here.
www.uplifterinc.com
Uplifter does software for clubs (including figure skating among other sports) so I am guessing they get their numbers from clients' data, and perhaps some other sources in countries where different software is used. The figures also depend on how you define 'figure skater' - presumably here it means registered club participants who might be testing/competing, so it would include a lot of 'grassroots' skaters. I think it offers an interesting alternative perspective of the sport's global popularity compared to looking at elite competition medal counts, TV viewership, fanbase numbers etc.