Sports are activities that involve physical effort or skill. They are usually governed by rules to ensure fair competition and consistent adjudication of the winner. They are a major source of entertainment for spectators, with spectator sport drawing large crowds and reaching wider audiences through sports broadcasting.
A person’s emotional state is also a central aspect of their sports experience. They may feel excitement, fear, or anger prior to a game; they might feel passionate identification with one’s representative team or with fellow fans; or they might experience despair or ecstasy following a game-winning goal.
The experience of emotion is structured within sports subcultures through emotional processes that help define roles for players, coaches, and fans and forge connections between sports and national identity. Athletes and coaches are expected to adhere to a set of scripts (or “feeling rules”) that are internalized and rehearsed before and during competition, and stage setters prompt athletes and fans to express a range of emotions throughout a game.
Global flows of people, technology, images, and ideas have facilitated the rapid and widespread development of modern sports. These flows have shaped the content, meaning, and significance of sports, as well as their organizations, ideologies, and bodies.
The emergence and diffusion of modern sports has been tied to complex networks of interdependency chains that are rooted in unequal power relations. In this context, Western cultures have dominated sports structures and organizations as well as the hegemonic discourses that animate them. Non-Western cultures, in contrast, have resisted the Westernization of sports and maintained, fostered, and promoted their own indigenous recreational pursuits on a global scale.
