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Sports Data
Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. 120-150 million people play soccer worldwide with over 15-17 million participants in Canada and the United States. McGill University research has shown that over one year, around 2/3 of university soccer players will have symptoms of a concussion after being hit in the head playing soccer.
Football has more total concussions in the USA because there are more football players. The risk or rate of concussions is almost identical for each sport. However, the number of soccer players has been increasing in the US over the past decade, while the number of football players has been decreasing. If this trend continues, eventually there will be more soccer players than football players in the US. If and when more people play soccer in the US, then there will be more concussions due to soccer than football.
The US government has realized there is a problem. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), a government organization, collects data from selected hospital Emergency Departments from across the entire U.S. in an effort to estimate the total number of injuries occurring during specific activities (ex. Soccer) and/or injuries occurring with specific products. The CPSC uses the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) as a monitoring device. NEISS figures are based on a sample of participating U.S. hospital Emergency Departments rather than a census of all U.S. hospital Emergency Departments.
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