The Datum Report

Occupation 6211 · Caring, leisure and other service occupations

Sports and leisure assistants

Half of full-time sports and leisure assistants in the UK earn more than £26,934 a year, and half earn less.

Sports and leisure assistants, provide and maintain facilities for sporting and recreational activities and supervise their use, maintain the continuity of entertainment and social events, offer odds and accept bets on the result of sporting and other events, control gambling activities, work behind the scenes in production and broadcasting enterprises in a supporting role to ensure operations run smoothly.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements, although some employers may require GCSEs/S grades. A variety of vocational qualifications are available in Sports and Recreation and Leisure and Tourism.

What the work involves

• maintains sports and leisure equipment and prepares equipment for use
• supervises the use of swimming pools, gymnasium apparatus, fitness machines and other recreational equipment
• work in teams patrolling popular stretches of the coast, advising people when and where they can swim safely and making rescues when necessary
• maintains hygienic operation of swimming pools and associated facilities such as hot tubs, showers and changing areas
• carries clubs for golfers, advises on the layout and distance of golf courses and appropriate choice of golf club
• announces acts, makes introductions, proposes toasts and maintains the continuity of entertainment events and social functions
• assesses likely outcome of an event and establishes odds, accepts and records bets, issues receipts and pays out on winning bets
• controls the progress of games of cards, roulette and other gambling activities according to established rules
• provides support in production and broadcasting operations, such as helping set up and maintain the set, running errands, moving equipment, looking after guests, and transporting crew and cast between locations

Also called

Croupier · Leisure attendant · Lifeguard · Runner (broadcasting) · Sports assistant

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for sports and leisure assistants, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 9 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Air travel assistants · Leisure and travel service occupations n.e.c. · Rail travel assistants · Travel agents