Sports, Geography of

Sports throughout the world are influenced by both the physical and the human geographies of a given location. Despite this relationship and the wealth of potential research topics, geographers tend not to treat sports as a serious academic theme, although economists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and even psychiatrists have done so. This void is evident in the discontinuation of the only journal on sports geography—Sport Place—due to the lack of submissions. This intersection of sports and geography has been studied by geographers since the 1960s, first by John Rooney and more recently by John Bale. Today, there continues to be a small group of geographers who study sports.

Topics in the geography of sports cover a wide range of human as well as physical geography themes. The most common topic has dealt with the recruitment of players for sports teams at both the collegiate and the professional levels. Much can be learned from the spatial distribution of athletes in a given sport. Recent trends in North American sports suggest that leagues are globalizing and recruiting players from countries throughout the world. The National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League have long been able to attract players from outside North America, while Latin American players have been a staple in professional baseball for decades. More recently, major league baseball searched for new markets for producing players and exposure. This expansion is best represented by the World Baseball Classic, which began play in 2006. While the tournament includes countries with noted histories of playing baseball—the United States, the Dominican Republic, and Japan—it also includes newcomers to the sport, such as China and South Africa. These new markets serve not only as ways to find new prospects for teams but also as ways to market the leagues and their teams in other countries.

Sports have also played a significant role in geopolitics and nationalism. The Olympics have long been a stage for promoting national pride not only for the host countries but for participants as well. Examples of moments that have stirred patriotic sentiments include the U.S. men's ice hockey team's victory over the Soviet Union in the 1980 winter games and the unexpected fourth-place finish by the Iraqi men's soccer team in the 2004 summer games. The Olympics have also been used as a tool of protest, including the 1976 Montreal summer games, boycotted by numerous African states over apartheid-related issues, and the boycotts of the 1980 Moscow Winter Olympics and the 1984 Los Angeles summer Olympics by the United States and the Soviet Union, respectively. There were also calls to boycott the 2008 Beijing summer Olympics due to human rights concerns in China, although no boycotts took place. The Olympics are also used as a way of seeking legitimacy and recognition by new and aspiring states in the international community. In 2000, athletes from Timor-Leste (East Timor) competed in the Sydney summer Olympics despite not being recognized as a country (Timor-Leste was not independent until 2004). Palestine has also been represented in the summer Olympics since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

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