A bunch of guys living in Pittsburgh and another bunch of guys living in Seattle decide to get together in Detroit and toss a ball back and forth. I live in New York and I never met any of these people - why should I care about this? Why should I care even if had been a bunch of guys from New York throwing the ball around? But I, along with several million other people, spent several hours watching them play despite the fact that it wasn’t even “my” bunch of guys out there.
Why do we watch sports? What is it that makes us care about the outcome of an athletic contest we’re not participating in? Why do men seem to have this more than women? How do we decide which side is “ours”?
Ask the mods to fix it. They’ll be happy to.
As for your question, the same question can be asked about music (why do we listen to other people singing and playing songs?) or theatre ( why do we watch other people perform in plays at the theatre or at the movies or on television?). My answer is because all those things, including watching sports, are fun to do and fun is good.
It’s probably largely a holdover from the days when we (or you, if we’re being gender-specific here) used to participate in it. The early baseball “clubs” in the mid-nineteenth century, for example, were amateur associations of enthusiasts from the same town who formed teams and played against similar clubs in other towns. School and college sports teams reinforced the “root for our side” mentality.
That sense of local attachment and pride in “our team” still persisted even as local sports “clubs” became professionalized. So even now, when “local” professional teams are largely composed of new recruits or trades from distant locations, many people still habitually think of them as “our team”.
As for why men tend to be more involved in this phenomenon than women, ISTM that it’s likely to be because most sports players are male. Until fairly recently, boys were much more likely than girls to play sports themselves as amateurs, and they also identified more readily with male professional athletes.
I think one part of the appeal of watching pro sports is that it is one of the few things in pop culture that isn’t controlled, scripted, predetermined and calculated for effect. There is no knowing exactly what is going to happen, and hopefully nothing that anyone outside of the game can do to influence the outcome.
I think the reason so many enjoy watching sports is tied to evolution to a certain extent.
It seems to me that atheletes are the kinds of people that would have been great hunters or even what Jared Diamond called “Big Men”; leaders of clans, tribes, or what have you, back in our pre-history (heck, even now!). It would only make sense that watching them and striving to be like them would have an evolutionary advantage. If I were a cave man, I’d certainly pick guys like Michael Jordan, Beckham, Barry Bonds or even Mia Hamm to come hunting mastadon with me.
Also, I think team sports also ties to the general need or tendency for matter to unify and cooperate, as I mention in this thread. I think any fan of team sports like the various versions of football, or hockey, basketball, etc. can certainly understand the attraction of watching a team work as one. When it’s done well, it’s a thing of beauty.
Numerous reasons. A ball game shares some of the appeal of an action movie (or TV show, or novel) with one key difference: no one knows ahead of time what’s going to happen.
At the risk of giving as circular answer: because caring about the outcome—pretending it matters who wins—makes the game more exciting and enjoyable to watch.
Two reasons I can think of:
(1) Sports have traditionally figured in male bonding. When guys watch sports, it takes them back to the time when they played ball games with their buddies or watched them with their dads and granddads.
(2) Sports share much of the appeal of such traditionally male pursuits as warfare, combat, and hunting
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When we watch sports, we vicariously identify with one of the sides, probably the one that’s easiest for us to identify with—either because they’re affiliated with our city, school, etc., or because they’re the team our friends or families like (or they’re not, and we want to assert our individuality), or because, from what we’ve heard about the players, we can somehow imagine they’re “our kind of people.”
Some friends and I once discussed that during particularly heated and exciting sports periods such as NHL or NFL playoffs (when one of our teams is actually playing) that our desire for sex actually decreases. As if watching sports provided some sort of subconscious satisfaction along those lines.
Then again, maybe it’s just all beer we were drinking.
Which is why I don’t care to watch male dominated sports on TV. Give me women’s Ice Skating, Beach Vollyball or Gymnastics anyday and I’m glued to the set. On the other hand, its great to go to a live game and actually feel that you are part of the action. Men’s Hockey, Football, Baseball, and Basketball are just stunning to watch in person, I never pass up a chance to go.
Gosh, is it Wednesday already? This must be the tenth time we’ve had this thread.
Anyway, one answer to the “why do men watch more sports” question which seems really obvious to me, but hasn’t been suggested, is that men are more physical. They’re stronger, faster, and more innately aggressive. Because they’re more aggressive, they enjoy physical competition more - I mean, it’s just impossible not to see that. Watch little boys versus little girls; the boys’ play is more physical, aggressive, competitive. My buddies and I would sometimes just fight and wrestle and generally kick the snot out of one another for fun. Little girls don’t tend to do that.
Because they’re stronger and faster, girls tend at some point to be likelier to be pushed out of sports, especially where girls’ sports are not well supported, and fans tend to be people who at least played the sport as a kid.
First off, my thanks to Skip for fixing the title and my apologies to everyone else for starting a new thread on an old subject.
A lot of interesting theories.
I can see the entertainment factor to some extent. But it doesn’t seem enough. Sports seems to trigger a much more fanatic devotion than people feel for any other form of entertainment.
Kimstu’s idea that are interest in sports is a residual holdover from a time when sports were more personal seems contradicted by the fact that our interest in sports seems to grow greater as the sport itself grows more distant. People are a lot more interested in the activities of a major league team playing two hundred miles away then they are of the minor league team playing a mile from their home. On the other hand, it could be argued that television has made major league teams “local” to their fans.
The greater physicality of men might explain why men would participate in sports but how does it affect viewing sports? If anything, evolution would suggest that men would have a affinity for playing and women would have an affinity for watching. Then men would have a chance to show off their genetic prowness and the women would have a chance to check out the relative genetic value of potential mates.
But in reality, sports seems to be a way for men to impress other men. Women, relatively speaking, aren’t interested. From a genetic standpoint, the whole activity seems like a lot of energy wasted in a misguided effort.
For the same reason that authors tend to read a lot, directors watch a lot of movies, and musicians listen to a lot of music. Participating in an activity makes the activity more interesting to you.
On the other hand, its great to go to a live game and actually feel that you are part of the action. Men’s Hockey, Football, Baseball, and Basketball are just stunning to watch in person, I never pass up a chance to go.