As with my blog, Hail Hogwarts Teachers, I think the numbers of the Wizardingly World are rather confusing, but none more confusing than sports. 

Actually I think all sports statistics are confusing like why anyone would pay someone millions of dollars to play the most boring sport of baseball, but I digress.

There are 14 professional quidditch teams in the British and Irish League. Each play must have 7 players, so that's 98 members; however, each team also has a reserve team (becuase Oliver Wood started on Puddlemere United's resere team) so that's actually a minimum of 196 players between the teams and their reserves. 

How long does the average quidditch player's career last? Ginny obviously retired early to have children, so let's look at some over sports.

Average Career within professional sports:

Professional (American) Football -3.3 years

Professional basketball-4.5 years

Professional baseball-5.6 years

Professional Football (Soccer)-8 years.

Wizards have a longer average life expectancy and they can heal injuries faster so let's say that they can play professionally for an average 15 years.

196 players/15 (average length of career)=13 players per year. So approximately 13 people are retiring somewhere along the contimuum (reserve or first string) and need to be replaced.

Hogwarts is the ONLY school in Britain/Ireland for the teams to pull from.  Each Hogwarts team as 7 players x 4 houses = 28 players total. However, not all of them are seniors. Let's say, typically fourth year and above make the team, so that means an average of 7 students are graduating that are eligible for professional quidditch teams (and how many of them are actually good enough to play?)

So, if the professional quidditch teams need an average of 13 per year and Hogwarts only has 7 (really good to really bad players) to give, where are they getting their players? They might get them from other countries but America doesn't really play and I'm sure the other areas of Europe are facing the same severe shortage. 

I don't know. I never understood sports statistics and I still don't.  Maybe Pele and Tom Brady can learn to ride a broom.