Sport
Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain or improve
physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to
spectators. Sports can, through casual or organized participation, improve one's physical health. Hundreds of sports
exist, from those between single contestants, through to those with hundreds of simultaneous participants, either
in teams or competing as individuals. In certain sports such as racing, many contestants may compete, simultaneously
or consecutively, with one winner; in others, the contest (a match) is between two sides, each attempting to exceed the
other. Some sports allow a "tie" or "draw", in which there is no single winner; others provide tie-breaking methods to
ensure one winner and one loser. A number of contests may be arranged in a tournament producing a champion.
Many sports leagues make an annual champion by arranging games in a regular sports season, followed in some cases
by playoffs.
Sport is generally recognised as system of activities based in physical athleticism or physical dexterity, with
major competitions such as the Olympic Games admitting only sports meeting this definition. Other organisations, such
as the Council of Europe, preclude activities without a physical element from classification as sports. However, a
number of competitive, but non-physical, activities claim recognition as mind sports. The International Olympic
Committee (through ARISF) recognises both chess and bridge as bona fide sports, and SportAccord, the international
sports federation association, recognises five non-physical sports: bridge, chess, draughts (checkers), Go and and
limits the number of mind games which can be admitted as sports.
Sport is usually governed by a set of rules or customs, which serve to ensure fair competition, and allow
consistent adjudication of the winner. Winning can be determined by physical events such as scoring goals or crossing
a line first. It can also be determined by judges who are scoring elements of the sporting performance, including
objective or subjective measures such as technical performance or artistic impression.
Records of performance are often kept, and for popular sports, this information may be widely announced or
reported in sport news. 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. Sport betting is in some cases
severely regulated, and in some cases is central to the sport.
According to A.T. Kearney, a consultancy, the global sporting industry is worth up to $620 billion as of 2013.
The world's most accessible and practised sport is running, while association football is the most popular spectator
sport.
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 SportAccord.
Other bodies advocate widening the definition of sport to include all physical activity. For instance, the Council
of Europe include all forms of physical exercise, including those competed just for fun.
In order 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 are often controversial.
In competitive events, participants are graded or classified based on their "result" and often divided into
groups of comparable performance, (e.g. gender, weight and age). The measurement of the result may be objective or
subjective, and corrected with "handicaps" or penalties. In a race, for example, the time to complete the course is an
objective measurement. In gymnastics or diving the result is decided by a panel of judges, and therefore subjective.
There are many shades of judging between boxing and mixed martial arts, where victory is assigned by judges if neither
competitor has lost at the end of the match time.
Key principles of sport include that the result should not be predetermined, and that both sides should have
equal opportunity to win. Rules are in place to ensure fair play, but participants can break these rules in order to gain
advantage.
Participants may cheat in order to unfairly increase their chance of winning, or in order to achieve other
advantages such as financial gains. The widespread existence of gambling on the results of sports fixtures creates a
motivation for match fixing, where a participant or participants deliberately work to ensure a given outcome rather than
simply playing to win.
