Professional sports
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Professional sports are sports in which the participants receive payment for playing, as opposed to amateur sports where they are not.
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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.
The increase of professionalism, as well as attempts to resist the spread of professionalism, have caused major problems for some sports.
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.
Lists of professional sports
See list of professional sports leagues, List of cities by number of pro-sports franchises
History
The 19th-century English class system and professional players
The English public school system (EPS) of the second half of the 19th century had a major influence on many sports. The schools contributed to the rules and influenced the governing bodies of those sports out of all proportion to their size. The public schools had a deep involvement in the development many team sports including all British codes of football as well as cricket and hockey. Moreover, the ethos of English public schools greatly influenced Pierre de Coubertin. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) invited a representative of the Headmasters' Conference (HC, the association of headmasters of the English public schools) to attend their early meetings. The HC chose Robert Laffan as their representative to the IOC.
The EPS subscribed to the Ancient Greek belief that sport formed an important part of education, an attitude summed up in the saying: "a healthy body leads to a healthy mind". In this ethos, taking part has more importance than winning, because society expected gentlemen to become all-rounders and not the best at everything. Class prejudice against "trade" reinforced this attitude. The house of a typical EPS boy would have a tradesman's entrance, because tradesmen did not rank as the social equals of gentlemen.
Within this class view it follows that if a person played a sport as a paid "professional", that would make the person a member of a trade. How could a club function when expectations demanded that some of the players enter through a side entrance? How would the social side of the club flourish if some of the members did not rank as gentlemen? How could a club of gentlemen which played a club of professionals possibly entertain their social inferiors?
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. (Echoes of this attitude still persist in Britain: for example Royal Marine officers must do better than "other ranks" on the commando course to qualify for a Green beret.) 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.
Athletics
Until the late 20th century the Olympics nominally only accepted amateur athletes. However, successful Olympians from Western countries often had endorsement contracts from sponsors. Complex rules involving the payment of the athlete's earnings into trust funds rather than directly to the athletes themeselves, were developed in an attempt to work around this issue, but the intellectual evasion involved was considered embarrassing to the Olympic movement and the key Olympic sports by some. In the same era, the nations of the Communist bloc entered teams of Olympians who were all nominally students or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full time basis. In 1982 Adidas was paying British Olympic athletes to wear their gear. The main person involved in the scandal was Horst Dassler. The first Olympics to officially accept professional athletes was, either 1988 or 1992.
Cricket
- Main Article see amateur and professional cricketers
See also: World Series Cricket
Field hockey
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Football (Soccer)
The governing body of Football is the Football Association (FA) which was founded in 1863 (See history of Football). In its early years football was mainly played on amateur basis. This was to change with the inauguration of the FA Cup competition in 1871. To do well in the competition clubs started to compete with each other to attract the best players. The players would be offered financial inducements to play. For example "boot money" was a term where cash (typically a half crown (12-and-a-half pence)) was placed in players boots after a game. The payment of inducements was possible because a successful team could be expected to generate considerable income for a club from tickets sold to supporters to watch matches. Although inducements were paid they were not direct payments because initially the FA was completely opposed to professionalism. By the mid 1880s this position was no longer tenable and professionalism was legalised in 1885. In 1888 thanks to the introduction of professionalism a new format for competition between the clubs was possible and The Football League was introduced to help further the commercialisation of football.
In 1904 the FA introduced maximum wage in 1904 to try to reduce competition between clubs. Maximum wages would last until the 1960s with players negotiating collectively through the Player's Union. There was also a complicated transfer system for players in England, which was challenged by George Eastham who won a ruling in the English High Court,(Eastham 1963: 146,) which ruled that the transfer system was "an unreasonable restraint of trade". In the 1977/1978 season 'freedom of contract' between players and clubs was introduced. This allowed players playing for English teams to negotiate wages close to their real market values. It also introduced the players agent as an important figure into English football to represent the interests of players.
In December 1995 the European Court of Justice upheld a ruling in favour of Jean-Marc Bosman. The court ruled that the football transfer rules overseen by UEFA were in breach of the European Union law on the free movement of workers between member states. As a result of this: "the European Union demanded that regulations concerning players' transfers and limitations on foreign players be amended almost immediately". (www.fifa.com). This forced UEFA to scrap the remaining restrictions on the ability of players and clubs to negotiate contracts with the each other. However UEFA is working with FIFA to try to find ways to re-introduce restrictions to help clubs and the sport of football in third word countries. On Thursday 21 April, 2005 UEFA's 52 member federations nanimously approved a rule designed to increase the number of locally trained players. UEFA's chief executive Lars-Christer Olsson was reported by CNN to have said that some of the major clubs in Europe like Chelsea F.C. and FC Barcelona were not happy with this rule and he that didn't rule out the possibility of a court challenge.
- References
- MS Word Format: The Financial Crisis in English football (http://www.imperial.ac.uk/business/dynamic/other/RiminiGroup/report120304/Reports/England.doc)
- Fact Sheet 16: The Bosman Ruling, Football Transfers and Foreign Footballers (http://www.le.ac.uk/so/css/resources/factsheets/fs16.html)
- UEFA adopts homegrown player rule (http://edition.cnn.com/2005/SPORT/football/04/21/uefa.congress.ap/)
Rugby Football
See also Football, history of rugby league, History of rugby union
In 1893, Yorkshire rugby football clubs complained that southern (gentlemen) clubs enjoyed over-representation on the RFU Committee and that committee meetings took place in London at times which made it difficult for northern members to attend. By implication they argued that this affected the RFU's decisions on the issue of "broken time" payments to the detriment of northern clubs who at the time made up the majority of English rugby clubs. ("Broken time" payments involved a proposal put forward by Yorkshire clubs that players receive a payment of six shillings when they missed work due to match commitments.) When the RFU voted down "broken time" payments, widespread suspensions of northern clubs and players began.
On August 29, 1895 representatives of the northern clubs met in the George Hotel, Huddersfield to form the "Northern Rugby Football Union" (usually termed Northern Union or NU), a professional body which played an "open" code of rugby which became known as Rugby League. The dispute about payment also affected soccer and cricket at the time. Each game had to work out a compromise; Rugby proved the least successful at doing this. Over a century would elapse before Rugby Union became an "open" code and would allow players who had played a game of Rugby League (even at an amateur level) to play in a Union game.
Gambling
Some sports developed as pofessional sports so that betting could take place. The pressures of potential loss of bets encouraged the emergence of champions and their incentivisation -- often with money.
Horse Racing
see also Horse racing
Boxing
see also boxing
Wrestling
see also wrestling
Blood sports
The sports of cock-fighting and similar sports.
Mercenaries
Under feudal conditions sport and military training often coalesced. Knights practised jousting as training for the heavy cavalry charge, archers perfected their skills in preparation for battle. As mercenary armies supplanted the feudal levy, so too the practice of surviving militaristic sports may sometimes have become associated with payment.
Criticism
Some argue that the money being spent on professional sports and professional althlete salaries would be better spent in other areas, such as fighting poverty.
See also
External links
- New World Sports - Sports Commentary (http://www.newworldsports.net)
- PDF Reverend Robert S. de Courcy Laffan Coubertin's 'Man' in England (http://www.aafla.org/SportsLibrary/Olympika/Olympika_1997/olympika0601d.pdf)fr:sport professionnel