Sport in the United Kingdom plays an important role in British culture and the United Kingdom has played a significant role in the organisation and spread of sporting culture globally. In the infancy of many organised sports, the Home Nations (England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland) were heavily involved in setting out the formal rules of many sports and formed among the earliest separate governing bodies, national teams and domestic league competitions. After Partition of Ireland in 1922, some sports formed separate bodies for Northern Ireland, though many continued to be organised on an all-Ireland basis. For this reason, in many though not all sports, most domestic and international sport is carried on a Home Nations basis, and England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland (or Northern Ireland) are recognised as national entities. This is in contrast to the majority of other states that participate in international sports which field a single national team to represent the entire polity.
In a small number of sports, these teams are supplemented by high-profile events, featuring a combined team representing one or more Home nations. The most notable examples of such arrangements are the British and Irish Lions in rugby union (and formerly the British Lions in rugby league), the Walker Cup golf team and Great Britain at the Olympics in relation to Olympic sports ordinarily organised on a Home Nations basis.
In other sports, especially individual Olympic sports such as athletics, swimming, cycling and triathlon, or those team sports invented outside the United Kingdom (e.g. basketball, baseball, ice hockey, lacrosse and volleyball), the United Kingdom generally participates as one nation, usually under the name Great Britain or, more rarely, as Great Britain and Northern Ireland; the latter is the official name of the United Kingdom's team at the Olympic Games, though it is commonly referred to, not uncontroversially, as the former - the trademarked brand name for the team of the British Olympic Association is "Team GB". Teams rarely, if ever, compete under the designation 'United Kingdom',As compared, for example, with the Eurovision Song Contest where the entry representing the nation is referred to as "United Kingdom" and "Royaume-Uni", its direct French language equivalent. reflected in the standard abbreviations GB and GBR. Before the founding of the Irish Free State, the name of the Olympic team was commonly given as Great Britain and Ireland with a standard abbreviation or Olympic code of either GBR or BRI.
Overall, association football attracts the most viewers and money, though the nation is notable for the diversity of its sporting interests, especially at the elite level. Great Britain has a special affinity with both Olympic Sport as the only nation to win at least one gold medal at every Summer Games, and with Paralympic Sport as the birthplace of the modern Paralympic movement in Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 1948. The capital London was the first city to host three Summer Olympic Games, and the United Kingdom has twice hosted the Paralympic Games, in London in 2012 and in Stoke Mandeville in 1984.
Major individual sports include athletics, cycling, golf, motorsport, and horse racing. The United Kingdom hosts significant major events across many sports annually, which see a seasonal uptick of interest in that sport for the duration of the event, including one of the four 'major' or 'grand slam' events in both tennis and men's golf. Tennis is the highest profile sport for the two weeks of the Wimbledon Championships. Snooker and darts, too, enjoy period profile boosts in line with the holding of their largest events, both of which are based permanently in England. The Boat Race in rowing, the All England Open Badminton Championships, Badminton and Burghley Horse Trials in three-day eventing, the London Marathon enjoy similar global renown within their fields, and peak interest for short periods nationally. The Open Championship in golf also peaks periodic interest domestically as the only non-US and oldest Major, but golf maintains a reasonably high-profile throughout the year and is a significant social sport.
Many other sports are also played and followed to a lesser degree. There is much debate over which sport has the most active participants with swimming, athletics, and cycling all found to have wider active participation than association football in the 2010 Sport England Active People Survey. The United Kingdom is widely considered one of the top performing sporting nations in the world.
History
17th century Writing about, has explained the role of Puritan power, the English Civil War, and the Restoration of the monarchy in England. The Long Parliament in 1642 "banned theaters, which had met with Puritan disapproval. Although similar action would be taken against certain sports, it is not clear if cricket was in any way prohibited, except that players must not break the Sabbath". In 1660, "the Restoration of the monarchy in England was immediately followed by the reopening of the theaters, and so any sanctions that had been imposed by the Puritans on cricket would also have been lifted."Leach (2005a) is a heavily annotated chronology of cricket 1300–1730 and the source for numerous entries here. He goes on to make the key point that political, social, and economic conditions in the aftermath of the Restoration encouraged excessive gambling, so much so, that a Gambling Act was deemed necessary in 1664. It is certain that cricket, horse racing, and boxing (i.e., prizefighting) were financed by gambling interests. Leech explains that it was the habit of cricket patrons, all of whom were gamblers, to form strong teams through the 18th century to represent their interests. He defines a strong team as one representative of more than one parish, and he is certain that such teams were first assembled in or immediately after 1660.
Prior to the English Civil War and the Commonwealth, all available evidence concludes that cricket had evolved to the level of village cricket, where only teams that are strictly representative of individual parishes compete. The "strong teams" of the post-Restoration mark the evolution of cricket (and, indeed of professional team sport, for cricket is the oldest professional team sport) from the parish standard to the county standard. This was the point of origin for major, or first-class, cricket. The year 1660 also marks the origin of professional team sports.
Cricket
Cricket had become well-established among the English upper class in the 18th century, and was a major factor in sports competition among the public schools. Army units around the Empire had time on their hands, and encouraged the locals to learn cricket so they could have some entertaining competition. Most of the Empire embraced cricket, with the exception of Canada.David Cooper, "Canadians Declare 'It Isn't Cricket': A Century of Rejection of the Imperial Game, 1860–1960." Journal of Sport History 26 (1999): 51–81. Cricket test matches (international) began by the 1870s; the first and most famous rivalry is that between Australia and England for "The Ashes."Derek Birley, A Social History of English Cricket (1999) excerpt
Public schools A number of the public schools such as Winchester and Eton, introduced variants of football and other sports for their pupils. These were described at the time as "innocent and lawful", certainly in comparison with the rougher rural games. With urbanisation in the 19th century, the rural games moved to the new urban centres and came under the influence of the middle and upper classes. The rules and regulations devised at English institutions began to be applied to the wider game, with governing bodies in England being set up for a number of sports by the end of the 19th century. The rising influence of the upper class also produced an emphasis on the amateur, and the spirit of "fair play". The industrial revolution also brought with it increasing mobility, and created the opportunity for universities in Britain and elsewhere to compete with one another. This sparked increasing attempts to unify and reconcile various games in England, leading to the establishment of the Football Association in London, the first official governing body in football.
For sports to become professionalised, coaching had to come first. It gradually professionalised in the Victorian era and the role was well established by 1914. In the First World War, military units sought out the coaches to supervise physical conditioning and develop morale-building teams.Dave Day, Professionals, Amateurs and Performance: Sports Coaching in England, 1789–1914 (2012)
Ireland
Following the partition of Ireland in 1922, some sports organisations created separate governing bodies for Northern Ireland, while others, including most of the larger and more prominent team sports such as rugby union, cricket and hockey, continued to operate on an all-Ireland basis. In soccer, uniquely, the teams from the new Irish Free State instigated the new organisation (now the Football Association of Ireland) as the original Irish Football Association was based in and seen to be heavily influenced by, Belfast-based teams.
Sports culture British Prime Minister John Major was the political leader most closely identified with promotion of sports. In 1995 he argued:
"We invented the majority of the world's great sports.... 19th century Britain was the cradle of a leisure revolution every bit as significant as the agricultural and industrial revolutions we launched in the century before."
The British showed a more profound interest in sports, and in greater variety, than any rival. This was chiefly due to the development of the railway network in the UK before other nations. Allowing for national newspapers, and travel around the country far earlier than in other places. They gave pride of place to such moral issues as sportsmanship and fair play.Peter J. Beck, "Leisure and Sport in Britain." in Chris Wrigley, ed., A Companion to Early Twentieth-Century Britain (2008): 453–69.
Cricket became symbolic of the Imperial spirit throughout the Empire. Football proved highly attractive to the urban working classes, which introduced the rowdy spectator to the sports world. In some sports, there was significant controversy in the fight for amateur purity especially in rugby and rowing. New games became popular almost overnight, including lawn tennis, cycling and hockey. Women were much more likely to enter these sports than the old established ones. The aristocracy and landed gentry, with their ironclad control over land rights, dominated hunting, shooting, fishing and horse racing.Derek Birley, Land of sport and glory: Sport and British society, 1887–1910 (1995)Derek Birley, Playing the Game: Sport and British Society, 1914–1945 (1995)
Many modern Olympic sports trace their roots back to Britain, including sports that are not commonly considered particularly British sports today, such as table tennis and bobsleigh.
Administration and funding Political responsibility for sport is a devolved matter. As England has no parliament of its own, the United Kingdom Department of Culture, Media and Sport which is headed by a cabinet minister -though the Minister for Sport and Tourism is not in the cabinet- deals with English sport in addition to United Kingdom-wide sports.
Political responsibility for sport in Scotland lies with the Scottish government Minister for Sport and Health Improvement, currently Jamie Hepburn, though is part of the remit of the Cabinet secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Sport, currently Shona Robison.