Why do people get so passionate and emotionally attached to Sports teams and competitors?
Since a young age, I have been fascinated by sports. The competitive appeal and the admiration of skill, talent and professionalism has rarely grabbed me in anything as it does in sport. Whether it is Football, Tennis, Formula One, Snooker and a reluctant admission to Golf, I am one of the billions of fans across the world that watch, listen to and participate in the sports that inspire and excite me.
In terms of playing sport, having toyed with and played a few in the past, I have to reluctantly admit yet again that the only sport I seriously play is Golf. But the main appeal of sport for many people is watching the top athletes showcasing their talent. For example, in the summer of 2018, the whole of England was washed away by the rapids of the football world cup. On the 13th of July, 26.6 million people tuned in to watch England crash out of the world cup in a tense and heart wrenching match against Croatia in the semi-final.-(statistic from ITV). Just to put that into perspective that is 39.7 percent of the entire population of the UK. When writing an article about the emotional attachment and intrigue towards sport, that statistic makes my eyes beam with joy (it’s always the small things right?). The whole country became obsessed with football at that time and it happens with all sports. Another example of this is when England won the Cricket world cup a couple of weeks ago the whole country went mad for cricket. Even I was glued to it and I find watching cricket apocalyptically dull (in reality, it isn’t that bad but I have to exaggerate to sound more interesting).
This age old obsession with sport and more importantly alliance to a certain athlete or team is more down to identity and family. Personally, I am a Derby County fan because I live there and it is not a long standing family alliance, however, most sports fans will have teams that their family has supported for decades and this is where the unconditional love spruces. That feeling of identity and community with people alike is what makes us so attached to sport and so connected to it. Each team or athlete is different and the competitive euphoria of watching your favourite one win or succeed can not be beaten by many feelings and for some people, by any feelings.
Sport has been around as a popular form of entertainment since the ancient Greeks and it has just grown and grown and grown. The viewing figures I discussed earlier epitomizes this growth and development over the years. Sport has gradually become more accessible due to innovations such as real-time news, television, radio and the internet. This growth will only continue and the number of people crying, cheering and screaming because of one small success in the grand scheme of a season or tournament will ever increase and I cannot see this appeal of sport dissolving.
I decided to write about this topic as I just witnessed Derby County win their first game of the season and it got me thinking about why that can change my mood and then looking at the wider context in how it changes everybody’s moods. It is an unusual phenomenon by that we get emotionally connected to something or somebody that most of us have never met before, yet we still feel like we are close to them. This is usually more prominent in single athlete’s. For example, earlier this year at the Masters golf tournament, Tiger Woods completed his comeback from dark days to win his first major championship since 2008 at the US Open. At the time, it seemed like every golf fan almost knew him and had felt the struggles that he experienced even though they did not have any idea how difficult it may have been for him. The personal element of sporting achievements like this is what I think makes us so curious and hooked to sport. The rare moments that will be remembered in history are the ones that we all wait for and the ones that make us so attached and integrated within teams and athlete’s whom we have no association with on a personal level.
That is how sport grabs us.
