25 years of Sport Northland

Sport Northland is a regional sports trust whose main goal is to get more Northlanders involved in sport through its many programmes, activities, events and facilities.

Wherever there’s Sport Northland, you’ll find us too. We’re proud to have been there since the early days and are celebrating 25 years as Sport Northland’s principal sponsor.

Our partnership began in 1992 with the launch of the ASB Northland Secondary School Sports Awards. Every year since, these awards have acknowledged sporting excellence in Northland’s schools.

Northlanders love their sport! Outstandingly, Northlanders volunteer over one million hours to sport and recreation every year. A total of 30% of locals get involved – that’s the highest percentage in New Zealand.

Northlanders have higher levels of passion for sport and recreation than any other region in New Zealand, with nine out of ten Northlanders taking part in at least one activity a year.

Sport Northland supports these activities through clubs, schools, events and its operation of the region’s major sporting facilities.

As the partnership continued from strength to strength, we saw the development of the ASB Leisure Centre in 2002 and the ASB Northland Sports House in 2010.

As well as supporting sports, Sport Northland encourages people to lead more active and healthy lifestyles. Its school programme, Project Energize, is designed to help schools improve their children’s physical activity and nutrition, and ultimately overall health.

We know that exercise is good for us, but do you know how much of a difference it makes to our country? Keeping active makes us healthier and more productive, and that’s worth $1b a year to New Zealand. It also helps prevent 1,100 premature deaths each year.

Sport Northland contributes to this with its fantastic initiative Green Prescription – a programme that enables doctors and nurses to prescribe activity to their patients.

Sport makes a massive contribution to the Northland economy and accounts for 3.7% of the GDP. It’s also one of the biggest employment industries – employing 1,700 Northlanders.

Contributing to this is the Kerikeri Half Marathon, and with many Northlanders taking part each year, it made sense for us to help support this too. So last year, we took up naming rights of the now-named ASB Kerikeri Half Marathon.

The efforts of Sport Northland have been instrumental in making sport a huge part of Northland life.

Through supporting local clubs and schools, running events, and operating its facilities, Sport Northland does a fantastic job of getting more Northlanders involved in sport and leading active lives.