All forms of physical activities and games that participants play in casual and organized settings to have fun or provide fun to spectators known as sports. These activities aim to boost physical ability and skills while bringing positive results for participants’ physical health. Generally, sports are designed to bring fun and entertainment to physically-fit people at first, but now tons of sports are available for disabled people. Sport is a broad term, and wrapping up its all concepts in one post is quite challenging, but it’s time to dig into some common terms and sports concepts.
What about Non-Physical Activities?
Internationally, different activities with the physical element in it are recognized as sports by the Olympic Games and Council of Europe. However, it’s good to know that these organizations also recognize some non-physical activities. For example, Chess and bridge are named as Bonafide sports by The International Olympic Committee, while SportAccord accepts these two mind games alongside three others: Go, draughts, and Xiangqi.
How many Participants are involved?
There are thousands of sports activities played in different parts of the world. However, when it comes to the most practiced sports around the globe, then it’s running. The most popular spectator sport is football. As far as participants are concerned, sometimes a contest is between two contestants, while other times it can involve hundreds of simultaneous participants. In some games, one candidate competes with another while others bring competition between teams.
Mainly sports participants are male. Although women’s sports participation has been promoted aggressively in the last three decades, only 32 percent of women contestants are there in the USA. Children and young people also participate in all physical and non-physical sports. However, they take part in sports to enhance their physical and mental abilities and even for fun. Many existing sports are changed to some extent so that disabled people can participate in those activities named adapted sports or parasports. Many high school and college students get involved in the most popular kinds of sports; they have an inter-school or inter-college competition to win.
How a Winner is Decided?
No matter how many participants involved in a game, there usually is one winner. The contest is between two sides, where one side tries to position higher than another. In some sports, you can’t find a winner because they allow a tie or draw. However, in other sports, there is a method of breaking-tie. In some kinds of sports, judges pick a winner while in other physical events the winner is determined based on goal score like in football or crossing the line first scenario like in the case of racing. If a judge is involved in a sport, then the decision of a winner is made based on his/her technical performance, other subjective and objective measures.
Rules and Regulations
There are specific rules for almost every sport or game you play. The purpose of these rules set is to make sure that competition is fair among all the contestants. One fun part of the sport is betting where spectators come and bet on the participants or game results. There is a proper regulation behind sports betting. In popular sports, a full-fledged record of each participant and contestant is kept for years and decades. You can easily access track records of a player from the last fifty years or more efficiently.
What is Fair Play?
Fair play is one every participant gets an equal opportunity to win an activity. Every player must have to follow specific rules and regulations. Different things make this fair play possible for every contestant.
Sportsmanship — many times, you hear that sportsmanship matters the most. Do you wonder what it is? It’s the attitude a contestant depicts while playing any kind of sport or game. It’s the courtesy toward other players, the grace you depict while getting victory or defeat. It’s all about ethical behavior and integrity that makes fair play possible for every participant.
Cheating — When a participant breaks the game’s rule only to win or undermine other participants, it’s known as cheating. Rules are there to make sure that every contestant gets an equal opportunity to win. In sport-fixing practice, an activity’s results are predetermined — which is nothing but cheating as other players don’t get equal opportunity to show their performance and strive to win.
Unfortunately, participants tend to cheat either to get some financial gain or to increase their chance of winning. Match-fixing and gambling are two common practices that promote cheating in the sports world. In the case of cricket match-fixing, both teams play in a way that they get a specific outcome-decided earlier.
Drug Use and Tests – Sports is a competitive activity in which players may use some drugs to boost up their performance level. The use of drugs is banned by well-known sports organizations such as the Olympics and SportsAccord. Before coming to perform on the ground, every player has to pass specific drug tests. If the test comes positive, then the player is banned or suspended permanently or temporarily.
Violence – Fair play is often affected by violence- demonstrated by contestants, fans, coaches, parents, or athletes. It’s an extreme anger expression where a violent person can damage another person or property. Participants of both national and international sports have to tackle the big challenge of inner and outer violence during a critical contest.
What is a Spectator Sport?
Some sports’ competitive nature brings aesthetic, and entertainment elements for non-participants or spectators and these elements give birth to spectator sports. Football, rugby, cricket, hockey, and many other games get people’s attention around the world. There are teams which play at both national and international level. World Cup and NFL are those tournaments where spectators come from different parts of the world just to watch games. It’s good to know that both professional and amateur sports catch spectators’ attention, and therefore, both are categorized under this term. Some spectators come for fun, while others come there to place bets on their favorite players and teams.
Tickets of leading tournaments sell like a hot-cake. Even when these games are broadcasted via radio, TV, and the internet, they allow organizers to earn hundreds and thousands of dollars. It’s not unusual that the most famous sports have a huge broadcast audience. If you check the record of the Football World Cup 2006, you will be surprised to know that more than 700 million worldwide were there to watch it. When the Cricket World Cup final was played in India in 2011, then the estimated audience was around 135 million.
You may find it quite interesting that in 2015, advertising space was sold for $4.5 million per second due to the Super Bowl — which became the most-watched television broadcast.