I reckon that most sports and pastimes don't take too long, even on the busiest of public golf courses you can usually get round in four/five hours.
A bag of clubs and change of shoes, whereas fishing takes a great deal of time, even pleasure fishing, dawn and dusk feeding times, the whole thing is time consuming.
It's only if someone is good at a sport, pastime or hobby that it starts to get seriously time consuming and expensive.
And that is not what most people want or have time to do these days, it's a completely different world now, where everything is instant.
Year on year, the numbers of anglers will drop as another year group pass away.
Look at the average club, the vast majority are over 60 years old, the junior sections get smaller, clubs are folding all the time, leases are being given up and clubs are merging to share water where the rents are too expensive for one club.
When I served on an Angling Trust committee, I asked why there was no reduction for OAP, I was told that OAP are the main funding group and had more money than most to pay their subs ?
Carp fishing is the saviour of fishing and although many don't like, you only have to go into the average tackle shop and the evidence is every where.
Personally I don't mind the numbers dropping, it will not affect me and there is more room on the banks (as others have said), but long term the future is bleak for angling.
Bob