9 September 2026
Marion Leisure & Fitness Centre in 2025-26
Seven in ten members at Marion Leisure & Fitness Centre are over 55. That is the highest share of any centre in South Australia, and it explains almost everything else about the place.
Walk into Marion on a Tuesday morning and the gym is busy, but not with the people a gym advertisement would show you. It is busy with members in their sixties and seventies, most of whom know each other by name, several of whom have been coming for years.
That is not an accident of catchment. Marion runs a dedicated gym room for older adults, an allied health service, and a group fitness timetable built around the middle of a weekday rather than the edges of it. The centre has no pool. What it has instead is a stadium that never stops and a membership that keeps turning up.
229,411
visits to the centre
917
memberships at the year’s peak
72.9
Net Promoter Score, against a YMCA benchmark of 50
72.0%
of members are over 55
Three years of growth
Marion now records 77,949 more visits a year than it did in 2023-24, an increase of 51%. Very little of that came from the gym floor. Most of it came from the stadium, from allied health, and from people who joined and then kept coming.
The centre reached 917 memberships at its peak, up 16.2% on the previous year, and members stay an average of 35 weeks against a state average of 30.
+20.8%
growth in visits year on year
+16.2%
growth in memberships
35 weeks
average length of a membership, against 30 across the state
Who trains at Marion
Across South Australia, just under four in ten of our members are over 55. At Marion it is seven in ten. The centre has the oldest membership profile of any YMCA South Australia centre by a wide margin.
Members by age
Share of memberships with a recorded date of birth. Marion: 846 members, 455 women and 391 men.
The 66 to 75 band alone is larger than everyone under 46 combined.
This is what an ageing suburb looks like when it has somewhere to go. The health evidence on staying active after 60 is not contested. The difficulty has always been the setting, because a room full of twenty year olds and loud music is not one. A dedicated seniors gym, staff who notice when a regular misses a fortnight, and allied health in the same building solve a problem that has very little to do with exercise equipment.
What members said
We ask our members how likely they are to recommend us. At Marion, 218 people answered out of 535 asked. That is a response rate of 41%, the highest of any centre in the state and double the state average of 20%.
The score was 72.9, against a YMCA benchmark of 50.
It's like a family. We all enjoy each other's company and the staff are very nice and friendly.
Member, Marion
Having a dedicated gym room for seniors with good quality, easy to use equipment.
Member, Marion
72.9
Net Promoter Score
218
members responded
41%
response rate, against 20% across the state
More stadium than gym
Most people picture a leisure centre as a gym with a pool attached. Marion is neither. Close to six visits in ten are for stadium sport: basketball, netball, futsal, school carnivals and competition nights that run most evenings of the week.
Share of total participation, 2024-25
That mix is the reason Marion matters to the City of Marion in a way a visit count alone does not capture. A stadium is where a junior competition lives, where a school holds its carnival, and where a club that could not afford its own venue gets a home.
129
Y registered stadium teams in 2024-25
23
people employed at the centre at 30 June 2025
1.3
average visits per week per member, against 1.29 across the state
What the activity is worth
$485,862
Estimated community benefit created at Marion in 2025-26.
Social Value puts a dollar figure on the community benefit created when people are physically active. It is an estimate, built from real participation data at this centre, and it covers health, education and employment outcomes where there is an agreed, evidence-based method for converting activity into monetary terms.
What the estimate covers
Select any indicator to read what it covers.
Value only accrues above a threshold
Turning up does not automatically create measurable value. A participant has to be active often enough to reach a physical activity threshold before anything is counted.
Across our centres, 43,735 people took part in an activity last year and 12,162 reached a threshold. Around 28 in every 100. That is normal for a community recreation centre, and the threshold is an invitation rather than a test.
How much of the centre the model sees
Roughly 27% of what happens at Marion is visible to the model. The figure above is real, and it is also an understatement.
The methodology comes from a 2018 study by KPMG, commissioned by the Australian Sports Commission, which put the value of Australia’s community sport infrastructure at more than $16.2 billion a year, including $4.9 billion in health benefit. ActiveXchange applies that framework to real participation records at each facility. Each participant is placed in a demographic segment with known health risks and associated costs, and their activity, covering how often they attend, for how long and doing what, produces dollar values against specific outcomes. More than 200 councils and venues across Australia use the same model. We do not produce the methodology and we cannot adjust it.
Turning up does not automatically create measurable value. A participant has to be active often enough to reach a physical activity threshold. Acute benefits are assessed monthly, in any month where activity averages out to the weekly physical activity guidelines. Chronic benefits are assessed annually and also require the participant to meet the monthly threshold in at least six separate months. Across our centres, 43,735 people took part in an activity last year and 12,162 reached a threshold, around 28 in every 100. That is normal for a community recreation centre. The threshold is an invitation, not a test.
ActiveXchange recalibrated its model during 2025. The practical effect is that the threshold for generating value went up. Activity is now measured on the actual length and intensity of a session, and a participant has to sustain it across the year rather than have one strong month. Figures we published before 2025 sit on the earlier model and are not directly comparable with the figure above.
Social Value counts visits recorded through our membership and point of sale systems. Casual customers, user groups and social stadium sport are not counted. At Marion Leisure & Fitness Centre, stadium and user group programs account for a large share of total participation, so the figure represents only part of what this centre delivers. Some benefits cannot sensibly be priced and are left out altogether. Recreation centres build social connection and inclusion, strengthen community pride and identity, raise levels of trust and reduce anti-social behaviour. None of that appears in the figure.
Social Value indicates the scale of community benefit generated by activity at this centre. It does not count individual health outcomes for any person, and it does not measure how well the centre is run. A centre can improve while its Social Value falls, and the reverse is also true.
Social Value figures are produced using the ActiveXchange Social Value model, developed in partnership with KPMG and based on the Value of Community Sport Infrastructure framework commissioned by the Australian Sports Commission. The model is used by more than 200 councils and venues across Australia. Figures are estimates. YMCA South Australia does not produce the methodology.
Reporting period 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026. Participation composition figures are from 2024-25. Written with AI assistance and reviewed by YMCA South Australia, in line with our AI Safe Use Policy.