Organization for the purpose of playing one or more sports
A sport club in
Belo Horizonte
,
Brazil
, showing various paved and painted surfaces for
futsal
,
handball
,
basketball
and
volleyball
, with two
swimming pools
in the foreground.
A
sports club
or
sporting club
, sometimes an
athletics club
or
sports society
or
sports association
, is a group of people formed for the purpose of playing
sports
.
Sports clubs range from organisations whose members play together, unpaid, and may play other similar clubs on occasion, watched mostly by family and friends, to large commercial organisations with
professional
players which have
teams
that regularly compete against those of other clubs and sometimes attract very large crowds of paying
spectators
. Clubs may be dedicated to a single sport or to several (
multi-sport clubs
).
The term "athletics club" is sometimes used for a general sports club, rather than one dedicated to
athletics
proper.
Friedrich Ludwig Jahn
's
Turners
movement, first realized at
Volkspark Hasenheide
in Berlin in 1811, was the origin of the modern
sports clubs
.
[1]
Organization
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Larger sports clubs are characterized by having professional and amateur departments in various sports such as
bike polo
,
football
,
basketball
,
futsal
,
cricket
,
volleyball
,
handball
,
rink hockey
,
bowling
,
water polo
,
rugby
,
track and field athletics
,
boxing
,
baseball
,
cycling
,
tennis
,
rowing
,
gymnastics
, and others, including less traditional sports such as
airsoft
,
billiards
,
e-sports
,
orienteering
,
paintball
, or
roller derby
. The teams and
athletes
belonging to a sports club may compete in several different leagues, championships and tournaments wearing the same club colors and using the same club name, sharing also the same club
fan base
, supporters and facilities.
Many professional sports clubs have an associate system where the affiliated supporters pay an annuity fee. In those cases, supporters become eligible to attend the club's home matches and exhibitions across the entire season, and have the right to practice almost every kind of sport at the club's facilities. Registered associate member fees, attendance receipts,
sponsoring
contracts, team
merchandising
, TV rights, and athlete/player
transfer fees
, are usually the primary sources of sports club financing. In addition, there are sports clubs, or its teams, which are publicly listed - several professional European
football clubs
belonging to a larger multisports club are examples of this (namely, Portuguese SADs (
Sociedade Anonima Desportiva
) such as
Sport Lisboa e Benfica
and
Sporting Clube de Portugal
, or Spanish SADs (
Sociedad Anonima Deportiva
)
Real Zaragoza, S.A.D.
and
Real Betis Balompie S.A.D.
, as well as Italian clubs like
Societa Sportiva Lazio S.p.A.
).
Some sports teams are owned and financed by a single non-sports
company
, for example the several sports teams owned by
Red Bull GmbH
and collectively known as
Red Bulls
.
[2]
Other examples of this are the several sports teams owned by
Bayer AG
and
Philips
corporations through the
Bayer 04 Leverkusen
and
PSV Eindhoven
respectively, that originally were
works teams
, the teams owned by the
Samsung Group
(
Samsung Sports
), and the teams owned by the
Anschutz Entertainment Group
(AEG). They may compete in several different sports and leagues, being headquartered in some cases across several countries.
Membership
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In the field of competitive club sports, an athlete will typically be registered to only one club for a given discipline and will compete for that club exclusively for the duration of a competition or season. Exceptions to this include
player trades
and transfers,
athlete loan agreements
and unattached trialists. Where an athlete competes in multiple disciplines, or where club membership has social or training aspects such as local athletic clubs, then athletes may register with multiple clubs.
Multiple membership is more common in the case of individual sports, such as the
sport of athletics
, where a distance runner may compete for a
track and field
team as well as a
road running
team, and also have further membership at a local sports club for training purposes. Some national sports bodies require an athlete to state a priority order of their club membership, outlining which club has the higher, or first, claim on the athlete's services.
[3]
Sports clubs around the world
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In many regions of the world like
Europe
,
North Africa
,
West Asia
, the
Indian subcontinent
or
Central
and
South America
, sports clubs with several sports departments (multisports clubs) or branches, including highly competitive professional teams, are very popular and have developed into some of the most powerful and representative sports institutions in those places. In general, student sports can be described as composed by multisports clubs, each one representing its educational institution and competing in several sport disciplines.
In the
United States
major institutions like
The New York Athletic Club
and
Los Angeles Athletic Club
serve as athletic clubs that participate in multiple sports. Examples also abound of sports clubs that are in effect one sports team. Each team from the
NFL
(American football),
CFL
(Canadian football),
NBA
(basketball),
MLB
(baseball),
NHL
(ice hockey) or
MLS
(association football) North American
sports leagues
, can be called sports clubs, but in practice, they focus solely on a single sport. There are some exceptions, especially when multiple such teams are under one ownership structure, in which case the club may be referred to as a "sports and entertainment" company; see, for example, the
One Buffalo
sports club, which fields an NFL team (the
Buffalo Bills
), two hockey teams (
Buffalo Sabres
and
Rochester Americans
), professional lacrosse (
Buffalo Bandits
and
Rochester Knighthawks
), and general athletics and fitness (Impact Sports and Performance). Even in such circumstances,
collective bargaining agreements
and contract laws generally do not allow a player on one sports team within a sports and entertainment company to automatically play for another team in the same company. On the other hand, American
varsity teams
are generally organized into a structure forming a true multi-sport club belonging to an educational institution, but varsity collegiate athletics are almost never referred to as clubs;
"club sports" in American colleges and universities
refer to sports that are not directly sponsored by the colleges but by student organizations (see
National Club Football Association
and
American Collegiate Hockey Association
for two leagues consisting entirely of college "club" teams in
American football
and
ice hockey
, respectively).
In the
United Kingdom
, almost all major sports organisations are dedicated to a single sport, the exception to this is
Cardiff Athletic Club
based in
Cardiff
, Wales, which is the owner of the
Cardiff Arms Park
site. It is responsible for much of the premier amateur sporting activities in city with
cricket
(
Cardiff Cricket Club
),
rugby union
(it is the major shareholder of the semi-professional
Cardiff Rugby Club
),
field hockey
(
Cardiff & Met Hockey Club
), tennis (
Lisvane (CAC) Tennis Club
) and
bowls
(
Cardiff Athletic Bowls Club
) sections. Catford Wanderers Sports Club is also a multisports organisation, with
badminton
, cricket, association football and tennis facilities. In addition, like in several other countries, many universities and colleges develop a wide range of student sport activities including at a professional or semi-professional level.
Fulham F.C.
once ran a professional
rugby league
team and rowing club, which other football clubs have emulated since. Many football clubs originate from cricket teams. Today, most major cities have separate clubs for each sport (e.g.
Manchester United
Football Club and
Lancashire County Cricket Club
are based in
Manchester
).
Many clubs internationally describe themselves as
football clubs
("FC", "Football Club" in British English and "Fußball-Club" in German; "CF",
Clube de Futebol
in Portuguese and
Club de Futbol
in Spanish). Generally, British football clubs field only football teams. Their counterparts in several other countries tend to be full multi-sport clubs, even when called football clubs (
Futebol Clube do Porto
;
Fußball-Club Bayern Munchen
;
Futbol Club Barcelona
). The equivalent abbreviation "SC" (for "Soccer Club") is occasionally used in North American English (for example,
Nashville SC
and
Orlando City SC
), but a general reluctance to decolonize the sport terminology means that most North American teams, somewhat ambiguously, as "football" in
North American English
refers to
North American gridiron-style football
still use "F.C." in their name instead (e.g.
FC Dallas
or
Toronto FC
).
See also
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References
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]