More than half of Canary Islanders exercise regularly every week, 52%, a figure in line with the Spanish national average and up six percentage points over the past five years. It sounds like a wellness-section statistic, yet it’s the starting point of one of the more interesting economic reports published this summer on the archipelago: the study on the socioeconomic impact of the sports industry in the Canary Islands, produced by the Canary Islands Sports Industry Cluster and reported by Canarias7 on 21 August.
Lined up, the numbers are striking. Sport now generates 4.45% of Canary Islands GDP, €2.586 billion out of the archipelago’s €58.1 billion total; counting indirect impact too, the figure climbs to €5.742 billion. Around 2,600 businesses operate in and around the sector, 1.4% of all registered companies in the islands, and it directly generates more than 55,000 jobs, rising past 66,000 once induced employment in related activities such as catering, accommodation, transport and physiotherapy is added in. Tax revenue tied to the sector, including IGIC, social security and income tax, comes to nearly €1.7 billion a year.
It’s against this backdrop that ExpoDeca, the Canary Islands’ Physical Activity and Sports Fair, returns in November, taking over Plaza de la Música in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria from the 12th to the 15th for its third edition, following ones in 2024 in the same city and 2025 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Promoted by the regional government through the Department of Education, Vocational Training, Physical Activity and Sports, and organised by the Gran Canaria Cabildo through Infecar, the fair aims to bring together brands, businesses, public officials and experts, with free admission for visitors.
What’s worth noting is that ExpoDeca isn’t an isolated showcase but one stop in an ecosystem that in recent months has already taken the Canary Islands to the Sports Summit in Madrid, secured one of four confirmed Spanish venues for the country’s first national hyatlon circuit, and backed events such as the fiftieth anniversary of the Rally Islas Canarias and the Gran Canaria Surf No Limit. So it isn’t a single event explaining the €5.7 billion impact figure, but an entire sector made up of small gyms, sports federations with more than 211,000 registered athletes, self-employed professionals and service companies, one that has quietly consolidated over the years.
A note of caution is due: figures of this kind, produced by an industry cluster, naturally tend to highlight the positive side of a business with every interest in looking significant to institutions. But even discounting the promotional gloss, the order of magnitude, a sector worth more than 4% of GDP and over 55,000 direct jobs, puts sport among the Canarian economic sectors worth watching as closely as the more talked-about tourism industry, with the advantage of spreading employment across the whole archipelago rather than concentrating it in the most tourist-heavy areas.
