This paper has identified a need for universities to use several strategies to encourage students to participate in sports. These strategies might include organizing more sporting activities, and by attempting to change the perception of sports by students. More specifically, our analysis suggests that universities should focus on providing organised, often competitive, social sports and that they should target these sports in their marketing of sports participation. Furthermore, students feel timeconstrained and unable to participate; thus universities might be wise to change the work culture of the university and the nature of the students’ working week, to give them more opportunity to participate in sports. Our results show that such changes might lead to improved sporting activities and higher general levels of activity.