Two million visits to our recreation centres
People came through the doors of a YMCA South Australia recreation and sport centre more than two million times last year. Here is what that produced.
A leisure centre is one of the few pieces of public infrastructure a person chooses to use. Nobody is required to swim laps. Nobody is sent to an aqua class. Every one of the 2,009,756 visits recorded across our recreation and gymnastics centres last year was somebody deciding, that morning, to go.
2,009,756
visits across 17 recreation and gymnastics centres
64.4
Net Promoter Score, against a YMCA benchmark of 50
$11,046,943
estimated community benefit
Where the two million went
Nine recreation centres, four gymnastics centres, two seasonal outdoor pools, a community leisure centre and a pilates studio.
Gymnastics includes locations at State Sports Park, Glengowrie, Seaford and O'Sullivan Beach. Other centres covers Kensington Community Leisure Centre, Strathalbyn Pool, Riverton Pool and Holdfast Pilates & Fitness. Strathalbyn and Riverton are seasonal outdoor pools.
St Clair is our busiest centre in the state at 470,728 visits, driven almost entirely by stadium sport. Marion grew fastest of the established centres, up 21% to 229,411. Thebarton recorded its busiest year since opening in July 2024.
Who used the centres
Two groups dominate and they sit at opposite ends of a life. Four in ten of our members are over 55. At the other end, the average swimming lesson student is under 7.
Share of each group, nine recreation centres
That shape decides what a centre has to be. It means a warm water pool matters, that a group fitness timetable has to run in the middle of a weekday, and that the person on reception knowing your name is a service rather than a nicety.
What members told us
We ask our members how likely they are to recommend us. Across the year 2,907 people answered, from our nine recreation centres and four gymnastics centres. The score was 64.4, against a YMCA benchmark of 50, and it rose at seven of the nine recreation centres.
Select a centre to see its score and read something a member wrote.
Net Promoter Score
What the activity is worth
Everything above is a count of what happened. This section is an estimate of what it was worth.
$11,046,943
Estimated community benefit created at our 9 recreation centres in 2025-26.
Social Value puts a dollar figure on the community benefit created when people are physically active. In 2018 the Australian Sports Commission asked KPMG to work out what community sport infrastructure is worth. The answer was more than $16.2 billion a year across Australia, including $4.9 billion in health benefit. That study is the reason councils build pools. ActiveXchange applies the same framework to real participation records at each facility, as more than 200 councils and venues around the country do.
It is an estimate. It indicates the scale of community benefit our centres generate. It does not count individual health outcomes, and it does not measure how well a centre is run. Gymnastics is reported separately and is not in the figure above.
More than half of it is teaching people to swim
Reduced risk of drowning accounts for $6,070,206 of the total, which is 55% of everything our centres generate. It is the single largest component by a wide margin, and it comes from one thing. More than 5,500 children and adults were enrolled in swimming lessons across our seven centres with a pool.
It is worth sitting with that. A council that funds a pool is not mostly funding fitness. It is mostly funding the reason a child does not drown twenty years from now.
Share of each centre’s community benefit that comes from learn to swim.
ActiveXchange recalibrated during 2025. The practical effect is that the threshold for generating value went up. Activity is now measured on the actual length and intensity of a session, and a participant has to sustain it across the year rather than have one strong month. Figures we published before 2025 sit on the earlier model and are not comparable with the figures below.
Where the value lands
57
council areas across South Australia contain someone who benefited from activity at one of our centres.
Our centres sit in eight council areas. The people who use them come from 57. This is the benefit sorted by where those people live rather than by which building they walked into, which is the question a council usually wants answered.
Home location basis, so this answers where the people who benefited live. Site figures elsewhere on this page use activity location, which answers where the value was generated. The two are different questions and the totals differ slightly.
Where the value comes from
Eleven indicators make up the estimate. Ten of them are added together to reach the total. Select any one to see what it covers. These are state figures across every site in the model, including the four gymnastics centres.
This is the eleventh indicator, the reduced healthcare cost arising from the chronic outcomes above, and it is already counted inside those figures. It is reported separately to show the public purse component.
64%
of the value was generated by people living in the five most disadvantaged deciles in the state
$909
average value generated per contributing participant across the year
Value only accrues above a threshold
Turning up does not automatically create measurable value. A participant has to be active often enough, for long enough, to reach a physical activity threshold. Monthly benefits need activity averaging out to the weekly physical activity guidelines. Annual benefits also require six separate qualifying months.
43,735
Counted once each. These are the people who hold an account with us, so a visit or a class can be matched to an individual. Casual visitors and social sport players do not, so they sit outside this count and outside the model.
Tap the other button to see how many of them were active often enough to reach a threshold.
Around 28 in every 100 reach a threshold. That is normal, and it is not a failing. Most of the other 72 came in, had a good time, and did not come back often enough for the model to count it. The threshold is an invitation, not a test.
What the model counts, and what it misses
Social Value counts visits and participations recorded through our membership and point of sale systems. Casual customers, user groups and social stadium sport are not counted.
That matters when reading any figure on this page. Across our centres the model sees just under half of the activity that actually happens. At one centre it sees nearly nine visits in ten. At another it sees roughly one in nine. The centres where it sees least are the ones with the biggest stadium and user group programs, so their figures understate what they deliver by the widest margin.
49%
of activity is visible to the model
$11,046,943
estimated community benefit in 2025-26
Figures cover the nine recreation centres. Casual customers, user groups and social stadium sport are not included, so the total understates activity across our centres.
What cannot be priced
Some benefits are left out of the dollar figure altogether, because there is no agreed method for pricing them. Recreation centres build social connection, strengthen community pride, raise levels of trust and reduce anti-social behaviour. None of that appears in the figures on this page.
Your centre’s year
Every centre has published its own 2025-26 results.
Management of Fleurieu Aquatic Centre transferred to another operator on 1 July 2026, so it has no article. Its 2025-26 figures are included here because YMCA South Australia ran the centre for the whole of the reporting period.
Social Value figures are produced using the ActiveXchange Social Value model, developed in partnership with KPMG and based on the Value of Community Sport Infrastructure framework commissioned by the Australian Sports Commission. The model is used by more than 200 councils and venues across Australia. Figures are estimates. YMCA South Australia does not produce the methodology.
Reporting period 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, during which YMCA South Australia operated all 17 centres. Fleurieu Aquatic Centre has since transferred to another operator. Participation covers all 17. Social Value covers the nine recreation centres only, because gymnastics figures are under review with ActiveXchange and Strathalbyn, Riverton, Kensington and Holdfast are not in the model.
Written with AI assistance and reviewed by YMCA South Australia, in line with our AI Safe Use Policy.