2.13: Geography of Sports

The Geography of Sports

Sports are a big deal. In many parts of the world, participating and/or watching athletic events is a significant part of people’s lives. Sports are a multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide. In America, many NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball teams are worth more than a billion dollars. Several major soccer teams in Europe are as well. The reason why sporting teams are so valuable lies beyond their simple entertainment value. Association with a team helps build the identity of individuals and creates a sense of community. Supporting a team, for many people, functions as a kind of “tribal affiliation” in an anthropological sense. Teams help build a sense of community belonging, making sports of intense interest to geographers.

Participation in Sports and Physical Geography

Where people play a specific sport is a fascinating entry point for students of geography. Answering “why?” by first asking “where?” is an effective means of understanding numerous, important cultural dynamics. An analysis of sports offers us important clues into how cultural behaviors, far more important than games, evolve within societies

Figure Los Angeles Ca water polo is a more popular part in the US where the diamates permit year- round play.

Climate is a significant factor in the geographical variation in sports participation. Ice Hockey, for example, is clearly a more favored sport among those living in northern climates, although as indoor hockey facilities open in warmer parts of the world, there is sure to be an increase in participation outside of the Frost Belt. Frigid, but smallish, Norway has won more medals in the Winter Olympics than any other country but has won only about half the number of medals in the Summer Olympics (281 vs 148), despite having more than triple the opportunities to win medals in the summer games. Golf, baseball, and water sports are more popular where warm winters permit year-round play.

Participation in some sports is conditioned by topography. The Austrians and Swiss dominate Olympic downhill skiing partly because those countries are situated in the Alps. Olympians from flat countries wouldn’t have much chance to practice those sports, so it makes sense that a Ukrainian has never won a downhill skiing medal. Various styles of auto racing seem to follow topographic cues as well. Drag racing is more suited to flatlands. Dirt track racing on small ovals is far more popular in Appalachia where building drag racing courses would be challenging.

Space is another key geographic element. Some sports require enormous amounts of space. For example, equestrian events, especially cross-country eventing and polo, require huge fields of play and so would be unlikely sports to gain popularity in either mountainous or urban regions. One bizarre exception to this trend is the famous polo series played at 12,200 feet in the Shandur Pass in Pakistan.

Figure Santa Ynez, CA. Some equestrian events require hundreds of acres and expensive equipment. Here a rider competes in a dressage competition.

On the other side of the coin are the world’s most popular sports, like soccer, cricket, and basketball. Each sport requires little space and few resources. Full-sized cricket/soccer pitches and basketball courts are not necessary, especially for children to play these games. Equipment is minimal for each sport, players can create homemade goals, balls, and other equipment. Vacant lots, streets, parking lots and small parks are all capable of serving as fields of play.

Basketball

In the United States, basketball is the most common sport played by Americans. It was invented in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891, so it’s hardly surprising that the United States dominates this sport internationally. However, basketball is not uniformly popular in all parts of the United States. Certain states, like Indiana and Kentucky, have a special passion for basketball that is difficult to explain. It appears that Indiana developed a love affair with the sport from its earliest days. For many years, Indiana also hosted a statewide tournament for high school teams that attracted far more attention than similar tourneys did in other states. Perhaps, as a result, top athletes in Indiana have been drawn to the notoriety to be gained playing basketball versus that gained playing other sports. Indiana, and indeed most other top basketball regions, around Kentucky, Illinois, and New York, are relatively weak in other sports, especially football.

Analyzing basketball participation at the state level though hides another process that becomes evident viewed at a finer geographic resolution. Since the 1950s, most top basketball talent in the US has come from big cities. It stands to reason that athletes in large cities would be attracted to basketball more than other sports because baseball, football, golf, etc. each require much space and may be too costly for poorer inner-city families (and their school systems). Many large cities, especially on the East Coast and in the Midwest, have high percentages of black residents, which helps explain why African-Americans dominate professional basketball. Non-geographers might suggest that biological factors account for the predominance of African-Americans in the NBA, but to those who think spatially, location has more compelling explanatory power. In recent years, white players from big cities in Europe, Canada and Australia have become more common in the NBA in recent years, while suburban and rural whites from the US have dwindled.