Professional sports

Professional sports are sports in which the participants receive payment for playing, as opposed to amateur sports where they are not.

Professionalism

Professionalism has increasingly come to the fore through a combination of developments: mass media and increased leisure have brought larger audiences, so that sports organisations or teams can command large incomes. As a result, more sportspeople can afford to make sport their primary career, and sportspeople often attain superstar, celebrity status. This can have the major advantages of increasing the level of proficiency, and of boosting the popularity of certain sports. It can also operate to exclude the part-time or amateur participant, and thus to have a limiting influence on a sport. However in most professional sports the number of amateur players is far greater than professional players.

Related Topics:
Professional - Mass media - Leisure - Team - Superstar - Celebrity

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The increase of professionalism, as well as attempts to resist the spread of professionalism, have caused major problems for some sports.

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Professionalism has another influence through organisations and fans seeing it as an attack on the central ethos of sport, i.e. the ethos of competition performed for its own sake and for pure enjoyment, rather than as a means of earning a living. Consequently, many organisations and commentators have reactively resisted the growth of professionalism, and some people see this as having impeded the development of sport. For example, rugby union had a reputation for many years as a part-time sport engaged in by amateurs, and English cricket has allegedly suffered in quality because of a non-professional approach.

Related Topics:
Sport - Competition - Rugby union - Cricket

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