When talking about the relationship between watching a sport and actually playing a sport, the two seem interrelated. People who play a certain sport are most likely followers of that sport. This makes sense because how else are you going to fully understand the rules, regulations, or right way to play the game. At the same time, the popularity of a sport is broken up into two categories: how many people are watching it and how many people are playing it. Take football in the U.S. for example. It's normal for someone to think that it's so popular in the U.S. because it seems to be the most watched sport. The popularity of a sport among spectators accounts for this, while the popularity among people who want to play comes primarily from high school boys. A common factor in the difference between spectating and participating is age. More young people are more likely to want to be active in a sport because they want to be like their role models, i.e. famous athletes (Harris 2004). On the other side of this, older people are more likely to watch the game rather than play because they fully understand it after following it for so long (Kretchmar 1994).
When it comes to participating in a sport, there are many different drives for wanting to play. Some athletes want to be the absolute best at their sport so that they can get something material out of it such as fame or money, while others play just for the fun of the sport or to have a healthy lifestyle. The reasons for wanting to participate advance and change as you get older. When you're younger, your parents may put you in a sport to expose you to it and to get you to make friends. By high school, participation is driven by the possibility of getting an athletic scholarship or to make the varsity team. In college, it gets more intense because it's like the absolute best players on a college team and many people feel like they can't compete at that level so they join intramural sports teams on the campus. Professional athletes train to be their best at their sport for the reward of money, but because it's such a high contact sport and there are physical changes due to age, most players are forced to retire at about their late 30's. People that are too old to play pro, just play to try to beat their personal records, as well as some who are in their 50's or 60's are just trying to stay in good shape and do it for health. The amount and kind of people that play a sport varies greatly based on the location, the gender of who's playing, age and even social class.
Spectators of certain sports vary depending on their location and social level. In America, football is like the number one sport to watch, both college and professional, followed by baseball and then basketball. With social classes, those who are of a wealthier class watch sports like polo, yachting or horse racing. People in the middle class like to watch tennis or golf. The working class people watch sports like wrestling, bowling and boxing. These are just generalizations though and not always true. People who watch sports are split into two categories based on how they watched it: those who listened or watched via media and those who saw it live. Marketing is big in sports and companies take advantage of the fact that there are a lot of people watching a sport so they advertise knowing that many people will see it. All in all, a lot of people watch sports, whether they play it or they just follow it. And the great thing about these sports is that one sport can be and is watched by people of different areas, social levels, genders and ages and they all just watch it to have a good time.
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