Writer/Editor: Hazard Additional Proofreading: Hurley
Since 2014, UXIR (University Mixed Indoor Regionals) has seen a drop in both the number of teams and the number of unique universities sending teams.
That's it, that's the whole article in a line. Everything else will be exploring both the extent of the drop and diving into the numbers a bit.
UXIR attendance being down *does not mean* that university Ultimate is down as a whole. That would require a lot more research, which I honestly hope this article inspires others to carry out. This article also does not seek to assign blame - I'm much more hoping this article serves as a marker of where we currently are, and sparks discussion of where we will go in future. Blame is easy, progress is hard. Let's focus on the latter.
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I was looking at the list of entrants to UXIR this year (2024), and I was struck by how few teams there seemed to be. So much so that I counted them - 97* in all.
I started university Ultimate in 2011, and in my early years it always felt like the problem Ultimate had was that, if anything, it was growing too much - it was harder to find venues, to fit everyone at tournaments, etc..
We always like to talk about the growth of Ultimate, and my brain couldn't let go of the idea that - in this specific area - we might actually be regressing.
I also realised that, due to having written many many preview articles over the years, I still had access to a lot of old schedules and/or spirit scores. Enough that I could count the teams that had attended in a given year.
I took one year at random - 2017 - and did a side-by-side comparison. It looked grim. We had 128 teams in that year. This means that over seven years we had lost 31 teams. So, I made myself a little table, looked at the percentage drop, and called myself done. I even broke it down by region to see if it made an impact.
However, it occurred to me that it's a big thing to just throw some data out there. Just looking at 2017 and 2024 didn't tell me about trends, and this thing called COVID-19 had a bit of an impact somewhere in the middle. I was also curious whether the number of universities had dropped over time - was the impact from bigger universities sending fewer teams, or from smaller universities disappearing entirely?
So, here's what I did:
- I looked at data from 2014-2024 (the regions changed in 2014 so comparison before this is tough). Be aware that no UXIR occurred in 2020.
- I recorded both the number of universities and the number of individual teams entered each year
- I also broke everything down by individual region.
Here's what to consider before I show the tables:
- UXIR is the first major tournament in the University calendar
- It is a mixed tournament, meaning it can be impacted by both male-matching-player and female-matching-player numbers in the club
- It does not show the size of the teams, nor anything about the level of competitiveness
- UXIR is not a BUCS event, and so Universities with BUCS-specific funding may struggle to send teams
- Small changes both up and down are expected as Universities go through good cycles and bad cycles. It’s easy to read too much into small swings.
OK. That's a lot of information all at once! Feel free to take a second to parse through it and make your own opinions. I didn't show the graphs going to zero since I cared more about the change in number of teams and in keeping the graphs in a tighter range - if you care about showing how close we are to zero I have plotted these graphs at the end of the article.
Some things I noticed from this data with regard to *overall trends*:
From 2016 to 2019 (i.e. pre-COVID), the total number of teams was already trending down, losing between 4-6 teams every year. While COVID did make an impact, it is certainly not the only factor.
However, the total number of universities entering pre-COVID was startlingly consistent. While individual regions varied, overall 63 universities were entering almost every UXIR from 2014-2019. That's an average of 9 universities per region.
COVID is undoubtedly a big factor, causing a massive drop in both teams and universities. However, if the downward trend of losing roughly 5 teams a year from 2016-2019 had continued, we'd expect 108 teams by 2021. We actually had 103 teams that year. So, in terms of total teams, we didn't actually lose many more than we may have expected.
The big impact COVID had was on the number of universities. Prior to 2020, the downward trend had been from fewer and fewer "second teams". The COVID drop resulted in 13 fewer universities, seeming to be the major factor in reduced participation. For me, I interpret this as smaller university teams being hit harder by the pandemic, which potentially lacked the infrastructure to survive the time without organised Ultimate.
From 2021-2023, we see a small positive trend in both universities and teams (103->105->108, 50->52->54). This isn't massive and does reflect the net rises and falls in various regions, but it is still worth noting. If nothing else, the trend of 2016-2019 appeared to have stopped.
Then, 2024. It's not worth reading too much into a single data point, but after a couple of years of growth it is worth noting that it is the worst ever for participation - both in terms of number of universities and raw number of teams - for over a decade. We have gone from an average of 19 teams-per-region in 2016, to less than 14 teams-per-region in 2024. We have also gone from 9 universities-per-region to less than 7.
Some things I noticed from this data with regard to *regional trends*:
Scotland: Scotland has consistently had 8 Universities enter, but since 2016 has consistently lost one team a year. Scottish Ultimate certainly had a golden era in the mid-2010s with respect to both size of teams, and quality of the top teams as well. This consistent reduction is a sign of the clubs shrinking - and it would be fascinating to see a breakdown by University (if my friends over at the Release Point fancy some homework).
North: With only 5 Universities present, the North was the region with fewest Universities in 2024. However, it's worth noting that overall - this year's 12-team tournament aside - it was probably the region with fewest ups and downs overall in terms of teams. It has consistently had 14-17 teams before this year (across the measured time period). 14-17 teams feels like the natural variation you'd expect as players come and go, rather than any sort of trend. As such it feels like 2025 might be the real test for this region’s UXIR health.
Yorkshire and East Midlands: Traditionally one of the bigger regions, it seems to have been most impacted by the disappearance of some Universities (Nottingham Trent, Sheffield Hallam, Hull, Lincoln, etc). Of particular note is Huddersfield - a former UWIR winner. What was 10-11 Universities pre-COVID has been 6-9 post-COVID. However, the bigger Universities within the region (Leeds, Sheffield, Loughborough) seem to still be growing, inflating the total number of teams in the region (and resulting in a lot of "second teams" at Nationals).
West Midlands and Wales: This region experienced some real growth from 2014-2016, and unlike other regions appears relatively stable during 2016-2019 (averaging 18 teams over 10 unis). From 2021-2024 they seem fairly stable, but at a lower level (12-15 teams across 6ish unis). Another region where COVID seems to be the main factor in the drop.
South West: Arguably the most stable region since 2015. They did have some real growth from 2014 to 2015, then seem to have mostly stayed there (potentially indicating the region redraw really helped local teams). If you take out 2021-22, then you wouldn't really see any dip at all. Also the only region where a university (Bath) sent a 5th team this year.
South East: A region that once had 20 teams now has 8. However, similar to Scotland, there hasn't been a real drop in the total number of Universities. This region experienced a massive drop in 2016 (20->14 teams) to become the smallest region, where it's stayed every year apart from 2021. It then experienced a second drop in 2022, and this year was composed only of first teams from the remaining Universities.
East and London: This region holds the record for most Universities in a given UXIR over the time period (13 in 2015), which sadly dropped to only 6 Universities in 2021 and 2024. Despite this, the main drop appears to be in 2018 where the region went form 19 teams on average to around 15 teams on average, and had kept at roughly that level despite the varying number of Universities.
Overall thoughts:
That's a lot of stats and a lot of words. Each region has its own stories, and if there are positive actions to be taken it's likely to be different in each region. While it's easy to point to certain years, remember that students do 3-4 year Undergraduate degrees and so sometimes something that happened in 2008 won't be felt until 2011. Universities with more postgraduate degrees or different sports funding or even just different transport links will all be affected differently. This article could be tripled in length if I had the resources to analyse everything on a University-by University level.
I do make mistakes, and there could be other interesting angles on this data. Feel free to make suggestions or to do some of your own analysis. Please remember I'll always be more willing to enter a discussion than an argument, and I'm sure a lot of you are the same.
Separately, I was always really interested to learn the impact COVID had on Universities, and I think we're now enough years away from the height of the pandemic that we can start to really see specifics.
2024 seems like a down year. However, we won't know until 2025, 2026, or even further until we know whether this was an outlier or part of a trend. Until this year, it had seemed like we were slowly recovering.
I would love for someone to do this analysis with UWIR, UMIR, and the BUCS leagues. I think the various formatting changes of UXON mean that while the data could be interesting, it's probably harder to draw conclusions from. UWIR and UMIR specifically could be very interesting though - I know there are unis that enter UMIR but not UXIR for instance. The larger regions (and longer travel times) of UWIR will make comparison a little harder, but could still be interesting in revealing more information about Women's University Ultimate.
However, mixed university Ultimate has always seemed like it got the short end of the straw for me. I find mixed one of the most enjoyable aspects of Ultimate, and it saddens me that fewer and fewer people are experiencing it at this level.
Finally, let's be positive. If you're reading this, the chance is you love Ultimate and want it to succeed. Let's figure out together how to bring UXIR forwards.
***
* There were 98 teams when I actually counted, but one team dropped out late. I deliberately waited until after UXIR to publish this so that I could see how many teams actually attended - thus giving a like-to-like comparison with the previous years which also suffered some late dropouts. However, since I use 97 in the final data I'm putting 97 at this point in the article to avoid confusion.
Bonus figures showing the same data above, but on a wider range:
