Sports leagues and tournaments provide the primary organisational frameworks for regular competition among teams or individual athletes. Activists for education and the war on drugs encourage youth sport as a means to increase educational participation and to fight the illegal drug trade. Rioting or hooliganism by fans in particular is a problem at some national and international sporting contests.
Sport is also a major source of entertainment for non-participants, with spectator sport drawing large crowds to sport venues, and reaching wider audiences through broadcasting. A sport is a physical activity or game, often competitive and organised, that maintains or improves physical ability and skills. The ancient Olympic Games were held in honour of the head deity, Zeus, and featured various forms of religious dedication to him and other gods. Among the most important reasons for the Stasi setting up this extensive network of collaborators was to prevent athletes escaping to the West, using both methods of surveillance and repression. Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny.
Roget’s defines the noun sport as an «activity engaged in for relaxation and amusement» with synonyms including diversion and recreation. Other meanings include gambling and events staged for the purpose of gambling; hunting; and games and diversions, including ones that require exercise. Kearney, a consultancy, the global sporting industry is worth up to $620 billion as of 2013. Records of performance are often kept, and for popular sports, this information may be widely announced or reported in sport news.
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- The ancient Olympic Games were held in honour of the head deity, Zeus, and featured various forms of religious dedication to him and other gods.
- From 1971, Olympic athletes were allowed to receive compensation and sponsorship, and from 1986, the IOC decided to make all professional athletes eligible for the Olympics, with the exceptions of boxing, and wrestling.
- Sport is also a major source of entertainment for non-participants, with spectator sport drawing large crowds to sport venues, and reaching wider audiences through broadcasting.
- It is a necessary part of some sports (such as motorsport), and it is used in others to improve performance.
- Athletes, coaches, fans, and parents sometimes unleash violent behaviour on people or property, in misguided shows of loyalty, dominance, anger, or celebration.
- In a race, for example, the time to complete the course is an objective measurement.
Étienne de La Boétie, in his essay Discourse on Voluntary Servitude describes athletic spectacles as means for tyrants to control their subjects by distracting them. When the Washington Commanders win their final game before an election, then the incumbent president is more likely to win, and if they lose, then the opposition candidate is more likely to win; this has become known as the Redskins Rule. A loss had the opposite effect, and the effect is greater for higher-profile teams or unexpected wins and losses. Politics and sport tragically intersected at the 1972 Munich Olympics, when Palestinian militants infiltrated the Olympic Village, took Israeli team members hostage, and ultimately killed 11 athletes in what became known as the Munich massacre. Such episodes are viewed as contrary to the fundamental ethos of sport—namely, that it be contested for its own sake and for the enjoyment of participants.
Gender participation
- Violence in sports involves crossing the line between fair competition and intentional aggressive violence.
- A wide range of sports were already established by the time of Ancient Greece and the military culture and the development of sport in Greece influenced one another considerably.
- According to Council of Europe, European Sports Charter, article 2.i, «‘Sport’ means all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels.»
- A sport is a physical activity or game, often competitive and organised, that maintains or improves physical ability and skills.
- According to the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the biggest risk for youth sport is death or serious injury including concussion.
- Youth sport presents children with opportunities for fun, socialisation, forming peer relationships, physical fitness, and athletic scholarships.
- Youth sport in the US is a $15 billion industry including equipment up to private coaching.
On occasion, such tensions erupt into violence among players or spectators, as during the 1969 Football War between El Salvador and Honduras, a conflict sparked by rioting at World Cup qualifiers. Under Rule 21, the GAA banned members of the British security forces and members of the RUC from playing Gaelic games, but the advent of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 led to removal of the ban. Until the mid-20th century a person could have been banned from playing Gaelic football, hurling, or other sports administered by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) if she/he played or supported Association football, or other games seen to be of British origin. In recent years the use of sport to reduce crime, as well as to prevent violent extremism and radicalisation, has become more widespread, especially as a tool to improve self-esteem, enhance social bonds and provide participants with a feeling of purpose.
Competitions may allow a «tie» or «draw», in which there is no single winner; others provide tie-breaking methods to ensure there is only one winner. The number of participants in a particular sport can vary from hundreds of people to a single individual. Did Los Angeles just make the costliest swing-and-a-miss in NBA history? Draft instantly before 9/9 and face off against football fans.
As many of these are based on existing sports modified to meet the needs of people with a disability, they are sometimes referred to as adapted sports. Disabled or adaptive sports are played by people with a disability, including physical and intellectual disabilities. Youth sport in the US is a $15 billion industry including equipment up to private coaching. According to the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the biggest risk for youth sport is death or serious injury including concussion.
Youth participation
Sport competitions may use a team or single person format, and may be open, allowing a broad range of participants, or closed, restricting participation to specific groups or those invited. Some sports, or individual competitions within a sport, retain a policy of allowing only amateur sport. Industrialisation has brought motorised transportation and increased leisure time, letting people attend and follow spectator sports and participate in athletic activities.
In a race, for example, the time to complete the course is an objective measurement. There are opposing views on the necessity of competition as a defining element of a sport, with almost all professional sports involving competition, and governing bodies requiring competition as a prerequisite of recognition by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) or GAISF. They also recognise that sport can be primarily physical (such as rugby or athletics), primarily mind (such as chess or Go), predominantly motorised (such as Formula 1 or powerboating), primarily co-ordination and dexterity (such as starzino casino snooker and other cue sports), or primarily animal-supported (such as equestrian sport). The precise definition of what differentiates a sport from other leisure activities varies between sources. The singular term «sport» is used in most English dialects to describe the overall concept, e.g. «children taking part in sport», with «sports» used to describe multiple activities, e.g. «football and rugby are the most popular sports in England».
It may concern unaltered or adapted sport activities, with and without competitions. Female participation in sports has risen alongside expanded opportunities and growing recognition of the benefits of athletic activity for child development and physical fitness. Sports have been increasingly organised and regulated from the time of the ancient Olympics up to the present century. To widen participation, and reduce the impact of losing on less able participants, there has been an introduction of non-competitive physical activity to traditionally competitive events such as school sports days, although moves like this can be controversial. By these…enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naïvely…as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.
