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Baseball Football Basketball and Other Popular Sports - Spectator Sports, The Weekend Warrior—sports Participation, Baseball, Basketball, Soccer, Bowling, Billiards And Pool—coming Of Age
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Americans love sports, and most children grow up playing team and individual sports during their physical education programs at school and simply for fun. Many men have played baseball or softball at some time in their lives, and some continue to play in community or neighborhood leagues long after they are finished with
school. Today, women are playing sports once played mainly by men, such as soccer, baseball, and basketball. Many men and increasing numbers of women are sports fans.
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Historically, football, baseball, and basketball have been called the "holy trinity" of sports in the United States. They make money not only by filling ballparks and arenas with fans but also from televised sports events. The start of each new sports season brings hope to millions of sports fans that their teams will be in
the championship games at the end of the year. These sports …
Each year, American Sports Data surveys individuals in twenty-five thousand households about their favorite TABLE 5.3 sports and sports activities for the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA). In 2003 the top four activities were recreational swimming, walking, bowling, and bicycling. (See Table 1.6 in Chapter 1.)
When the SGMA ranked those sports that involved team play, it found …
Participation in baseball, the sport once known as "the national pastime," fell during the final years of the twentieth century. During a sixteen-year period ending in 2003, baseball participation dropped 27.1%, according to the SGMA. (See Table 1.6 in Chapter 1). In that year the number of Americans who played fell to 10.9
million, with the sport ranked as the sixth most popular tea…
Basketball is a highly popular activity in the United States. It was the most popular participatory team sport in 2003, according to the SGMA (see Table 5.3), and the second most popular spectator sport according to a Gallup poll conducted in December 2003. That poll found that 14% of Americans ranked basketball as their
favorite sport to watch. (See Figure 5.1.) Basketball players were also among…
Although soccer has long been popular in Europe, Asia, Central America, and South America, its popularity in North America began growing during the late twentieth century. Two key events that helped boost interest were Olympic soccer tournaments held in Los Angeles, California, in 1984, and in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1996. In
1994 the U.S. Soccer organization served as the host federation for World C…
In 2003 bowling ranked as America's most popular participant sport, according to the SGMA, with fifty-five million players. (See Table 1.6 in Chapter 1.) However, according to the American Bowling Congress (ABC), the largest organization of bowlers in the United States, serious participation was declining. In 1998 the
organization reported total membership in men's, women's, a…
Billiards is another popular participation sport in the United States. In 2003, 40.7 million Americans played billiards at least once, up 15.4% from 1987 when 35.3 million people played, according to the SGMA in its 2004 Super-study of Sports Participation. (See Table 1.6 in Chapter 1.) According to a 2001 SGMA survey, about
nine million Americans played pool frequently—more than twenty-fiv…
Through the 1960s, tennis was popular primarily among the affluent. The game became "fashionable" and gained broader participation in the 1970s, but industry experts reported that many tennis players turned to aerobics and other fitness activities in the 1980s. In 1987 the SGMA reported that 21.1 million Americans played
tennis. (See Table 1.6 in Chapter 1.) In the 1990s tennis parti…
Golf was the fifteenth most popular sport to play in the United States in 2003, according to the SGMA. (See Table 1.7 in Chapter 1.) Although the total number of golfers grew 4% between 1987 and 2003, from 26.3 million to 27.3 million, it was down almost 10% from a high of thirty million in 1998. (See Table 1.6 in Chapter 1.)
Professional golf also had a strong following as a spectator sport. A De…
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