Football draws few followers to the pitch
Around 15 per cent of Swiss play football as a hobby, and one in five amateur footballers are female, according to research.
Among those surveyed, football was marginally more popular among German speakers, with 16 per cent playing the sport. Eleven per cent of French speakers participated regularly in games, against ten per cent of those polled in Italian-speaking Switzerland.
The results of two studies by the WEMF research organisation published on Monday also found that people who play football drink eight per cent less than the national average (86 per cent) and take less over-the-counter medicine than others (56 per cent compared with 74 per cent).
But the studies showed that football doesn’t always mean that regular players are health fanatics: 31 per cent of them smoke, compared with the national average of 29 per cent.
Around 11,000 people were interviewed for the two studies carried out between April 2006 and March 2007 on the habits of regular players aged 14 and over.
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