"From the British Isles, modern sports (and the amateur rule) were diffused throughout the world. Sports that originally began elsewhere, such as tennis (which comes from Renaissance France), were modernized and exported as if they too were raw materials imported for British industry to transform and then export as finished goods."
See 'Globalisation' and "Sociology" title section.

Sport has historically played an important role in all societies, be it in the form of competitive sport, physical activity or play. But one may wonder: what does sport have to do with the United Nations? In fact, sport presents a natural partnership for the United Nations (UN) system: sport and play are human rights that must be respected and enforced worldwide; sport has been increasingly recognized and used as a low-cost and high-impact tool in humanitarian, development and peace-building efforts, not only by the UN system but also by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments, development agencies, sports federations, armed forces and the media. Sport can no longer be considered a luxury within any society but is rather an important investment in the present and future, particularly in developing countries.

The article focuses on sports team owner Stan Kroenke. Kroenke's status as the owner of teams in many different professional sports including the St. Louis Rams football team, the Denver Nuggets basketball team and the English soccer team Arsenal is examined. Kroenke's unassuming personality is discussed as an element of his style as an owner. The financial success of Kroenke's teams is discussed, particularly his purchasing of stadiums as commercial real estate.

During the past three decades sport has assumed an ever greater role within the globalisation process and in the regeneration of national, regional and local identities in the postcolonial and global age. With much of global culture displayed by the media, events, particularly significant sporting ones such as the Olympic Games or the soccer World Cup, have become highly sought after commodities as developed countries, and increasingly some leading developing countries, move towards event-driven economies.
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This document covers the commercialisation and globalisation of sport including cultural factors and the impact of new technologies on global sport.

Map depicts most popular sports in the world according to their popularity in that region. Football is the most popular sport in the world followed by sports like American football, cricket and others.

ports journalists have been facing this conundrum of ranking sports for some time now. Every now and then we see contradictory rankings of most popular sports alleviating whatever confidence we had in those reports. For ranking any sport’s popularity it is imperative that we set the criteria for ranking first. If TV viewership of any sports is the criteria then Beijing Olympics 2008 was by far the most watched sporting event with over 1 Billion people tuning in at some point during the Olympics event. For us TV viewership isn’t the only criteria for a sports popularity rather it should be the number of other factors combined to get the best popularity ranking.

It’s no exaggeration that digital technology is transforming the world of sports—boosting fans’ appreciation of games, enhancing athletes’ public profiles, informing athletes’ training methods, even influencing how contests are waged. Interest in the intersection of digital technology and sports is keen, to judge from the almost 4,000 attendees at the recent 2016 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston.