Mind-Boggling Stats About The Powerlifting Industry—And How Fast It’s Growing

The powerlifting industry is on fire.

Some stats that will blow your mind:

• Over 1.5 million unique athletes have competed so far.

• Athletes from 193 different countries have participated in powerlifting competitions.

• The peak year for the sport was 2019, with 131,222 unique athletes competing.

But it’s not until you break each of these down that you realize how quickly the powerlifting industry is really growing:

• Over 1.5 million unique athletes have competed so far. This is an impressive stat at face value. But what’s 10x more impressive is that this growth has been happening across 193 different countries. That’s nearly every country in the world. This is a signal of where things might be headed.

• Athletes from 193 different countries have participated in powerlifting competitions. The last time an industry saw growth like this, it was in the early 2000s when the internet was becoming mainstream. (Fun fact: back then, the internet was available in fewer countries than powerlifting is today.) And I’m betting the same thing will happen again here.

• The peak year for the sport was in 2019, with 131,222 unique athletes competing. As if the above wasn’t impressive enough, this stat is just mind-boggling. To give you a sense of how big that is, that’s roughly the population of Pasadena, California. Or Cambridge, UK. Or Aalborg, Denmark. Just to put things in perspective.

My guess is that the powerlifting industry will continue its steady growth, eventually reaching even more people around the globe. Despite the temporary setback in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the decreased participation of Russia and Ukraine in recent years, the sport has shown resilience and is still growing, especially in countries like the USA. And at this rate, we can expect to see more records broken and milestones achieved in the coming years.

What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree?

This page uses data from the OpenPowerlifting project, https://www.openpowerlifting.org.

You may download a copy of the data at https://data.openpowerlifting.org.