Heres how many climbing competitions and events happened in London in 2023

Opening stats and information

• Area tracked: London (defined as within M25)
• Total gyms tracked: 38
• Total number of events tracked: 127
• Gyms with events: 31/38

Notes:

• Stratford City Bouldering not open yet at time of writing
• Rhino Boulder opened Dec. 2023

Worth noting is that this data largely looks at raw number of events. While this is interesting, it does not paint the whole picture if you are considering things like impact or attendance. It would be perfectly legitimate to run fewer events that are more impactful, and I don’t currently have the data to present that side of the story, so do just keep it in mind as you browse these numbers. :)

Event formats

We currently classify events into one of three categories: Comps, Leagues, and Events

Comps are traditionally one day (but may be multi-day) events, usually with a fixed start time.

Leagues are a type of competition that run over a longer period, usually without a fixed start time, and are to be completed at the climbers leisure.

Events are climbing related events that are marketed to the wider public, but don’t have a competition component. (i.e. London Climbing Festival). These do not include things like weekly gym socials.

Notes:

• London Climbing Festival does include a competition component this year (2024)
• Our tracking of ‘Events’ in 2023 was a bit more limited, so some may be missing.

Event breakdown by Month

Average events per month in London: 10.58
Median: 11

November was the most popular month for events, with 18 events occurring (or starting) in the month. March is a close second, at 15.

Early Spring/Early Winter are popular times for climbing events. Events stay relatively constant throughout the summer, but take a noticeable dip in January as everyone recovers from the holidays and plans their next year.

With this split by format, we can see there is some seasonality present, with leagues upticking in spring and winter, likely since many gyms tend to run spring/winter leagues.

Event breakdown by Gym

Curious how this breaks down by gym?
Average events per gym: 3.34
Median: 3

Top 5 in terms of raw number of events:

1. Yellow Spider Climbing
2. Stronghold Tottenham Hale
3. White Spider Climbing
4. The Nest Climbing
5. Substation Brixton

We can see that the top contenders run a lot of league events. Generally, leagues are simpler to run and (likely) more intended for the regular members of a gym to have some gamified progress on a comp set over time, with generally smaller prize pools. There are some exceptions to this however, Strongholds “The Siege” and London Climbing Centres “The League” spring to mind as examples of leagues with larger prize pools, showcase finals, and as a result these may garner more outside interest.

That being said, it may still be interesting to see the top gyms when only looking at comps, as the picture changes slightly:

1. Westway Climbing Centre
2. HarroWall climbing centre
3. The Arch North
4. The Climbing Hangar London
5. The Arch Acton

Event breakdown by gym organisation

One last thing that might be of interest, is to group these by the organisation they are a part of, and seeing what the distribution looks like. In the image below, the gyms have been grouped by the larger organisation they are a part of (if they have one). We can see that about 50% of the organisations host about 80% of the events, with LCC expectedly topping the charts, hosting about 23% of all London climbing events across their 8 centres.

Closing thoughts

The London competiton scene seems vibrant, you could attend multiple events every month if so inclined. While we lack further data on some of the specifics, I hope this will serve as a starting point for more analysis.

This is the first year I (or anyone as far as I know) has collected a full year of data for the London competition scene as a whole. It will become more interesting over time as we get more data, and collect data on different things. The end of 2024 will be very interesting since I will have data on a years worth of the competitions and events throughout the whole UK, and for two years in London.

Please reach out if you have any thoughts or comments.