Regularly participating in sports activities can have a positive effect on people's health and is therefore an important area of health promotion. Data of the Telephone Health Survey 2003 indicate that until now there is an unexploited potential for programmes promoting sports: in total 37.3% of men aged 18 years and above and 38.4% of equally aged women do not participate in sports at all; another 20.9% of men and 28.4% of women only engage in sports activities for up to 2 h/week. The highest prevalence of sports activity is seen among young adults, whereas it is lowest among older people. However, the latter slightly increased their sports activity during the last 10 years, while the trend observed among younger adults seems to point rather in the opposite direction. Also relevant for the planning and implementation of group-specific interventions is the observation that persons with low socioeconomic status tend to engage less often in sports than people with middle or high status do. The present study underlines the health relevance of sports participation by presenting inverse relationships between sports activity and behaviour-related health risks such as smoking and obesity as well as a positive effect of sports on self-assessed health.