Talk:Professional sports

European bias
This article is WAY too oriented towards British/European sports. Sorry folks, but NOT EVERYONE IS EUROPEAN. Somebody please add in some American sports, like Baseball, Basketball, American Footbal..... -Gamingboy
 * Seems more Austocentric to me 206.11.112.251 19:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * If people want more sports in here ... put them in then? People usually contribute what they know or have an interest in.Boomshanka

this article is seriously lacking... seriously eurocentric also. Volleyball, Track & Field, arent even in the list. I was looking for sportsmanship and it linked here. This doesn't link there. The Criticism part II is heavily not NPOV. Dwarf Kirlston 19:03, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * At the moment the entire article is more or less a non-comprehensive list of sports where professionals exist. I miss a general discussion of the aspects of professionalism in sports. Sorry, for only complaining and not helping out myself. jzeller 22:28, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what this article is designed to achieve ... comparisons between amateurism and professionalism? historical development? Maybe a clearer definition needs to be provided ...Boomshanka

Article title
Per Naming conventions, article titles should be singular, so this article should be moved to Professional sport. This applies equally to most other articles ending in "sports" (though not "List of ..."). Hairy Dude 17:50, 10 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. Can an admin sort this out, please? Avengah (talk) 07:39, 6 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I remind you two British chaps that this is an article in American English. And in American English, “professional sport” does not normally function as the same abstractive collective as “professional sports”. —SlamDiego&#8592;T 09:06, 6 May 2008 (UTC)


 * And "sports" is actually also used in British English fairly often. "Sport" in British English means "sporting as an overarching concept". At any rate, this article, like Sports, should remain where it is unless there's a broader consensus to move all such article to either one form or the other, and that is probably a discussion that would happen at WT:SPORT. —  SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 16:41, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Woah

 * Note: This thread has also been copied to Talk:List of professional sports as some of it consists of proposals to do with the list, now in its own article there, and some is only to do with the prose material here at the original article. —  SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 17:13, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

This article needs a lot of work, including defining what the article itself is trying to achieve. Is it a list of professional sports (would be a long list)? Information about historical roots of professionalism in each sport? The intricacies and logistics of money in each sport/events eg sportsperson sponsorship at olympics... Maybe a table of top/average salarys per sport would be beneficial to see what sorta money we're talking about. Any ideas?

[unsigned]


 * It should be an article of information about the history and nature of sports professionalization. A list of pro sports should definitely be a separate article. —  SMcCandlish    Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 16:41, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Global perspectives task force
As other editors have mentioned, this article needs a lot of work. At the most basic level, a number of major professional sports are not listed. Improvement of this article falls under the global perspectives task force of the project on countering systemic bias, so I am going to try to start some expansion along those lines. Would love some help from anyone interested in making this article more comprehensive! Thanks. --Mackabean 01:43, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Has anything actually been done? What's the schedule on this? And Student athlete need WP:BIAS cleanup much more than this one does. —  SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 16:41, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Reason for criticism
Various reasons are listed, including Horse racing, Boxing, Wrestling, and Blood sports without any explanation why they are reasons for criticism. In fact I don't understand why sports like boxing is one of the criticisms. May anyone add the reasons if they are really some criticisms? Salt 07:19, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I removed the whole criticism section.. No sources were provided for any of it and the section just listed various sports as criticisms.. Why? I don't feel that section as it was written belongs in this article. Spanneraol 22:05, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * That's fine - unsourced material should be removed. However, in respone to Salt's original question, the obvious answer is that the sports in question are considered dangerous to at least some of the participants (the horses) or all of them (in combat sports of any kind). —  SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 17:13, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

It's too simple
Reading the section on the evolution of pay-for-performance athletics, one would think that Sit mens sana in corpore sano was a slogan of class-superiority, surmise that pay-for-performance athletics ($600,000 per year for a corporate suite in Yankee Stadium) is about doing away with class barriers, and wrongly conclude that pay-for-performance athletics was created in the 20th Century. The development of paid athletics, like the development of mass entertainment (or mass politics) is not a simple tale of capitalism breaking down archaic class distinctions in the name of opportunity for all. The "Sports Salaries" section suggests something of a contradiction in that regard. One doesn't really challenge the class system by selecting a few individuals who aren't in the upper class and making them into millionaires.

There are good arguments against the present system of paid sport which are unacknowledged. One of them is that Sit mens sana in corpore sano is actually a good way of life, and that the focus of youth athletics -- and people's perception of athletics -- should not be directed almost entirely into supporting (mostly at the taxpayer's expense) school-based recruitment systems for a billion-dollar sports industry. Another is that localized amateur athletics, continued well beyond one's last year of high school, promotes the development of individual relationships tied to the communities in which people live and work (the enemy, one might argue, of pseudo-democratic mass culture).

I appreciate the author's interest in history and the socio-political implications of athletics, which is not something immediately thought of in connection with pay-for-performance athletics. In that way, the author's introduction to the development of the modern system of paid athletics is insightful. But the author should revisit this section, if only to qualify the flat and simple claims made here.

[unsigned]


 * Yeah, the article kind of sucks at this point, even 4 years after people started pointing out what needed to be fixed in it. —  SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 16:41, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Ancient history
Just a point for later expansion: professionalism in sport did occur in ancient times, as demonstrated by surviving ancient artwork which depicts Ancient Olympic athletes receiving significant rewards for sporting victories (with the amount being more than triple a labourer's yearly wage). I read all about it at the Deutsches Sport & Olympia Museum in Koln a few months ago. There should be a number of sources available to cite and back up this important part of the history of professional sport. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) Join WikiProject Athletics!  12:33, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

class
I took this out of the article, mainly because overall it's naive, it's also inaccurate on particular points. The section on Scott just reflects a popular myth. There are other problems. Well-educated, well-nourished men with free time generally would perform better than Joe Bloggs. They performed better than Joe Bloggs in codifying sports in the first place. Hardly prejudice. Class has something to do with sports but not this:

''Another prejudice which existed amongst late Victorian and Edwardian gentlemen held that the all-round abilities of British gentlemen allegedly meant that, if they put their minds to something, they would perform better than anyone else. This included the other British classes. The British attempts under Scott to reach the South Pole illustrate this prejudice. In the Scott expeditions, gentlemen refused to take the instructions of Canadian dog-handlers seriously, or to learn from Scandinavians how to use cross-country skis properly. To compensate for their failures to master dog and ski they persuaded themselves (and their contemporaries) that walking and to man-hauling sledges to the South Pole made the process more of an achievement.[2] If professional teams were to beat gentlemen amateur teams consistently, that might burst the illusion of social superiority, and that could lead to social instability, something not in the perceived interests of the British upper classes of the time.'' Hakluyt bean (talk) 22:25, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Further to my war on class chippiness, this line: "How could a club of gentlemen which played a club of professionals possibly entertain their social inferiors?" Well, the issue is surely that modern sports originated as social activities in private clubs (by people with land, time and other resources). The article suggests that there's an obvious social compulsion for private clubs to admit non-members, but I don't see it.  Presumably it's just hindsight.  Hakluyt bean (talk) 22:38, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Pro-Am
"Most sports played professionally also have amateur players far outnumbering the professionals.". The emphasis is surely all wrong. Professionals make up a tiny proportion of participants in any sport. Hakluyt bean (talk) 22:40, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Further to the above "According to a survey conducted by FIFA published in 2001, over 240 million people from more than 200 countries regularly play football." (fr article - association football). Professional soccer players can't number more than 50,000 I'd say, though it's hard to get an exact figure. Hakluyt bean (talk) 22:49, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Their are 34,000,000 registered football players according to FIFA — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adam4267 (talk • contribs) 17:18, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Salaries Association Football
There must definitely be something wrong about the quoted salaries. For example, in the German Bundesliga there's no way the players earn more than 5 mio. Euro ON AVERAGE - nor is there any evidence of that in the quoted article. Even the best, wealthiest, and arguably best-paying team (Bayern Munich) just pays $5,780,358 on average, which is about 4.4 mio. Euro (according to that source). The others spend way less. I suspect the same thing holds for Italy and Russia. Just look at the numbers for the premiere league (which seem to be reasonable): 1.2 mio. pound on average. Players in Italy earning more than twice the amount than those in England? Improbable.

My cuts
"Each sport has the highly paid players, but calculation of the average yearly salary has shown that the highest paying sport is the National Basketball Association (NBA). With the NBA having the smallest rosters of the four major professional sports leagues, and playing over a relatively long schedule with significant television revenue, a large pool of money can be divided among a relatively small pool of players. On average, basketball players in the NBA make over 5 million dollars each year. " The reference is no longer available. The paragraph has a very non-encyclopedic tone. The first sentence seems to be answering the question "Which sport pays the highest salaries?", but this is not openly stated. This may have been directly copied from the answers.yourdictionary.com site. The paragraph assumes an American viewpoint ("four major professional sports leagues") but this is not necessarily clear to a non-American.

"For the period May 2012 - May 2011, Kobe Bryant was the highest paid NBA player totaling $25,244,000 in salary, and was the world's third highest earning athlete earning $53 million. During that period Samuel Eto'o, earned $54 million and the world's highest earning athlete was Tiger Woods, earning $75 million. 20 years ago, the average basketball salary was $575,000; now, the average is $5,200,000, an 804% increase. " The reference is no longer available. "Twenty years ago" as compared to when? --Khajidha (talk) 14:43, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

American Football
Saying Rugby evolved from Soccer is like saying human beings evolved from Chimpanzees. The fact is both the codes came out of various "foot ball" games played in present day Britain (and to a smaller extend, other parts of Europe). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.244.200.254 (talk) 16:32, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Male POV
Hi. I added a POV tag today because there is such a great disparity between male and female salaries. I added a couple statistics, best I can do. -SusanLesch (talk) 16:16, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

United States Constitution
Professional sports has historically had a much stronger position in the United States compared to Europe. In Europe professional sports has historically in many sports been prevented by the national sports federations, for example by banning participants in them. In Swedish Wikipedia it is written that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents national sports federations to prevent peaceful assemblies of people, such as professional sports events, even if the organizer does not obey nor write a contract with the national sports federation. Is that any kind of true? --BIL (talk) 07:54, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

very superficial article, lacking information and focusing only on team sports.
Very superficial article for several reasons. It lacks a lot of major information chapters. Tdunsky (talk) 16:11, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * only focuses on team sports. No word on very popular individual pro sports, such as tennis, track and field, boxing, wrestling, motor sports, etc.
 * no history of professional sports and the Olympics (e.g. the ban on professional athletes in the Olympics that has gradually gone, the addition of NBA players/NHL players/tennis pros to the Olympics, and more).
 * no chapter about professional sports and doping.