Sport in the United Kingdom

Participating
Interested In
Association Football	46%	10%	45%
Rugby union	21%	NA	27%
Tennis	18%	3%	23%
Cricket	18%	2%	19%
Athletics	18%	2%	21%
Snooker	17%	5%	24%
Motor racing	16%	NA	20%
Rugby league	12%	NA	15%
Boxing	11%	NA	14%
Darts	9%	3%	NA
Swimming	NA	9%	NA
Gym	NA	12%	17%
Badminton	NA	3%	NA
Squash	NA	3%	NA
Watersport	NA	2%	NA
Skiing	NA	1%	NA
Lawn Bowls	NA	1%	NA

Sports media[edit]
The British media is dominated by United Kingdom-wide outlets, with local media playing a much smaller role. Traditionally, the BBC played a dominant role in televising sport, providing extensive high-quality advertisement, free coverage, and free publicity, in exchange for being granted broadcast rights for low fees. ITV broadcast a smaller portfolio of events. In the early 1990s, this arrangement was shaken up by the arrival of pay-TV. BSkyB based its early marketing largely on its acquisition of top division English league football, which was renamed The Premiership as part of the deal. It has subsequently acquired many more top rights in other sports. However, Sky tends to focus on competitions which can fill its specialist sports channels on a regular basis, and many events are still shown on free to air television, especially annual and quadrennial events, such as Wimbledon and the Olympics. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland each have their own feeds for BBC1 and BBC2, allowing the BBC to opt out of the United Kingdom-wide programming to show a match in that area. This is often used when all four nations have an International football match on the same evening, but can also be used to show minority interest sports in the country where they are most appreciated (for example BBC One Scotland may show the shinty cup final, while BBC One Wales shows a rugby union match between two Welsh sides). In Scotland, the BBC also operates BBC Alba, a Gaelic-language channel which often broadcasts Scottish sports fixtures.
There are also regulations which prevent certain listed events from being sold exclusively to pay television. In 2006, the Irish company Setanta Sports made a major move into the British market by paying £392 million for rights to certain Scottish Premier League, as well as one third of live Premier League matches for the three-year period from summer 2007 to summer 2010.[18]
Radio sports coverage is also important. The BBC's Radio Five Live broadcasts almost all major sports events. It now has a commercial rival called TalkSport, but this has not acquired anywhere near as many exclusive contracts as Sky Sports. BBC Local Radio also provides extensive coverage of sport, giving more exposure to second-tier clubs which get limited national coverage.
The United Kingdom does not have an extant tradition of sports newspapers in the mould of L'Equipe, Gazetta dello Sport and Marca – although publications such as Bell's Life in London, The Sporting Times and The Sportsman, all featuring a particular emphasis on horse racing, were popular during the 19th century and into the early 20th century, whilst Sporting Life and the Sports Argus continued publication until the 1990s and 2000s, and live on as a website and a supplement to the Birmingham Mail respectively. All of the national newspapers except the Financial Times devote many pages to sport every day. Local newspapers cover local clubs at all levels, and there are hundreds of weekly and monthly sports magazines.
By sport[edit]
Team sports[edit]
Four sports in the United Kingdom operate high-profile professional leagues. Association football is the most popular sport and is played from August to May, headed by the Premier League in England, and the Scottish Premiership in Scotland. Rugby league is traditionally a winter sport, but since the late 1990s the elite competition, Super League has been played in the summer to minimise competition for attention with football. Rugby union is also a winter sport, with Premiership Rugby in England, and the United Rugby Championship in Scotland, Wales and Ireland being two of the three dominant leagues in the Northern Hemisphere. Cricket is played in the Summer, from April to September in a variety of formats by professional county teams under the auspices of the England and Wales Cricket Board, while in Ireland and Scotland, the franchise driven Euro T20 Slam is the only fully professional competition.
There are also a number of semi-professional leagues with a national footprint; Ice Hockey operate a league in the United Kingdom called the Elite Ice Hockey League, with at least one team in each of the four constituent countries. Both men's and women's basketball leagues, the British Basketball League and Women's British Basketball League operate on a professional basis in England and Scotland, as does the premier netball competition the Netball Superleague in England.
In Northern Ireland, as in the rest of Ireland, gaelic games enjoy significant support from the nationalist community, although the players are mostly amateur. Despite the amateur status, major games involving county teams from Northern Ireland draw attendances comparable with both rugby codes, and in the later stages of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship comparable with the largest Premier League teams.
Association football[edit]
Main articles: Football in the United Kingdom, Football in England, Women's football in England, Football in Scotland, Football in Wales, and Association football in Northern Ireland

Wembley Stadium, London, home of the England football team and FA Cup finals.
The modern global game of football evolved out of traditional football games played in England in the 19th century and today is the highest profile sport in the United Kingdom by a very wide margin. This has been the case for generations, but the gap is widely perceived to have increased since the early 1990s, and football's dominance is often seen as a threat to other sports. Each of the four countries in the UK organises its own football leagues for both men and women; there are however a few teams who play in another country.
The only major national team competition won by a Home Nation is the 1966 World Cup, which England hosted and won, though clubs in both the Scottish and English domestic leagues have had success in European club competitions, most notably the UEFA Champions League or its predecessor the European Cup. Glasgow's Celtic won the 1966-67 European Cup, becoming the first British team to do so, with a team composed entirely of players born and raised within the local area around the club's stadium, while the following year, Manchester United became the first English club to win the competition, 10 years after the team had been the victim of a notorious air disaster in Munich while playing in the same competition. Liverpool, with 6 wins, is the most successful English, and British, team in European football, while the competition has also been won by Manchester United 3 times in total, Nottingham Forest twice, and Aston Villa, from Birmingham and Chelsea from London once each. Arsenal, which now shares ownership with the men's club of the same name, has won the UEFA Women's Champions League once.
The Welsh football league system includes Cymru Premier (historically the Welsh Premier League) and regional leagues. These leagues have a relatively low profile as rugby union is the national sport of Wales and the top three Welsh football clubs play in the English league system; in addition, one Cymru Premier club, The New Saints, play their home matches on the English side of the border in Oswestry. The Welsh clubs of Cardiff City, Colwyn Bay, Merthyr Town, Newport County, Swansea City and Wrexham play in the English system, while Merthyr Tydfil also played in an English league before they were liquidated in 2010. The main Welsh Cup competitions are the Welsh Cup and the FAW Premier Cup. Cardiff's 76,250 seater Millennium Stadium is the principal sporting stadium of Wales.

Hampden Park, Glasgow—Scotland's national football stadium
The Northern Ireland football league system includes the NIFL Premiership, often known colloquially as the "Irish League". One Northern Irish club, Derry City, plays its football outside of the United Kingdom in the Republic of Ireland football league system. Windsor Park, Linfield F.C.'s 20,332-seater stadium, is also the home stadium of the national team.
Each season the most successful clubs from each of the home nations qualify for the four Europe-wide club competitions organised by UEFA—the UEFA Champions League (formerly the European Cup), the UEFA Europa League (formerly the UEFA Cup) and, starting with the 2021–22 season, the UEFA Europa Conference League for men, as well as the UEFA Women's Champions League. England has produced winners of both the men's and women's Champions Leagues, and Scotland has produced a winner of the men's version. Linfield of Belfast's run to the 1966–67 European Cup quarter-final is the furthest any Northern Irish or Welsh team has reach in the premier European men's competition. Historically Welsh men's clubs were able to qualify for the now-defunct UEFA Cup Winners' Cup by winning the Welsh Cup: a number of Welsh teams enjoyed runs into the latter stages of the competition, with Cardiff City going furthest by reaching the semi-finals of the tournament in 1967–68.
For 100 years until 1984, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland competed annually in the British Home Championship but these ended for a variety of reasons. 2011 saw the inaugural Nations cup, in many ways a reboot of the old tournament. When the idea was first proposed to bring back the competition, the English FA had reservations, and so it was contested by the other three home nations and the Republic of Ireland, who were the first host nation and winners. The tournament was intended to be played biennially to prevent fixture congestion during World Cup qualification years with the 2013 event to be held at the Millennium stadium in Cardiff, the tournament was cancelled after the first year as very few fans were prepared to travel and the tournament did not create the expected revenues. Scotland and Wales were drawn against each other in World Cup qualification anyway, and a 150th anniversary friendly was organised between Scotland and England to celebrate the anniversary of the formation of the English F.A.
No United Kingdom national team is regularly formed for football events in the Olympics. Proposals to have the United Kingdom (designated by the IOC as Great Britain) take part in the 2012 Summer Olympics with men's and women's teams were not supported by the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish football associations. The three bodies feared that Great Britain teams would undermine their independent status—a fear confirmed by FIFA president Sepp Blatter.[19] England has been the most successful of the home nations, winning the World Cup on home soil in 1966, although there has historically been a close-fought rivalry between England and Scotland.