SPORTS..

 Sports are competitive, physical activities that require skill, strategy, and physical expertise, providing both physical benefits and entertainment.

Records of performance are often kept, and for popular sports, this information may be widely announced or reported in sport news. Sport is also a major source of entertainment for non-participants, with spectator sport drawing large crowds to sport venues, and reaching wider audiences through broadcasting. Sport betting is in some cases severely regulated, and in others integral to the sport.

According to A.T. Kearney, a consultancy, the global sporting industry is worth up to $620 billion as of 2013.[6] The world's most accessible and practised sport is running, while association football is the most popular spectator sport..

                         

The word "sport" comes from the Old French desport meaning "leisure", with the oldest definition in English from around 1300 being "anything humans find amusing or entertaining.

The International Olympic Committee recognises some board games as sports, including chess.

The precise definition of what differentiates a sport from other leisure activities varies between sources. The closest to an international agreement on a definition is provided by the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF), which is the association for all the largest international sports federations (including association football, athletics, cycling, tennis, equestrian sports, and more), and is therefore the de facto representative of international sport..

have an element of competition

be in no way harmful to any living creature

not rely on equipment provided by a single supplier (excluding proprietary games such as arena football)

They also recognise that sport can be primarily physical (such as rugby or athletics), primarily mind (such as chess or Go), predominantly motorised (such as Formula 1 or powerboating), primarily co-ordination and dexterity (such as snooker and other cue sports), or primarily animal-supported (such as equestrian sport).[1]

There has been an increase in the application of the term "sport" to a wider set of non-physical challenges such as video games, also called esports (from "electronic sports"), especially due to the large scale of participation and organised competition, but these are not widely recognised by mainstream sports organisations. According to Council of Europe, European Sports Charter, article 2.i, "'Sport' means all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels."