The media, sports and economics of Great Britain

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.^[7]
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.^[8] 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 golf, 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.^[9][10] Many modern Olympic sports trace their roots back to Britain.

Four sports in the United Kingdom operate high-profile professional leagues. Football is the most popular sport and is played from August to May. Rugby league is traditionally a winter sport, but since the late 1990s the elite competition has been played in the summer to minimise competition for attention with football. Rugby union is also a winter sport. Cricket is played in the Summer, from April to September. There is also a professional Ice Hockey league operating in Great Britain called the Elite Ice Hockey League.
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 league; 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 5 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 Foresttwice, and Aston Villa, from Birmingham and Chelsea from London once each.

Rugby Football

Like association football, rugby union and rugby league both developed from traditional British football games in the 19th century. Rugby football was codified in 1871. Dissatisfaction with the governance of the sport led, in 1895, to a number of prominent clubs establishing what would become rugby league. The estranged clubs, based in mainly working class industrial regions of northern England, had wished to be allowed to compensate their players for missing work to play matches but they had been opposed by those clubs that were predominantly middle class and often based in the south of the country. Subsequently, rugby league developed somewhat different rules. For much of the 20th century there was considerable antagonism towards rugby league from rugby union. One Member of Parliament described it as "one of the longest (and daftest) grievances in history" with anyone over the age of 18 associated with rugby league being banned forever from rugby union.^[20] This antagonism has abated since 1995 when rugby union's international governing body, now known as World Rugby, "opened" rugby union to professionalism.

Basketball

Basketball is a minor sport in the United Kingdom. The top level league is the British Basketball League with the English Basketball League and Scottish Basketball League below them. While following an American franchise format rather than using promotion and relegation like most European leagues, the majority of recent additions have come from the English league. As with football, the home nations teams were encouraged to work together for the Olympics, while British international basketball teams have not achieved any major successes since then, FIBA officials stated that if they re-entered the European competition after the Olympics as individual nations, they will be treated as unranked newcomers. After meeting with FIBA officials, Basketball Wales voted against making the merger permanent citing amongst other things, the lack of opportunity for Welsh players within a United Kingdom framework (no players in either the men's or women's Olympic squad were Welsh) and for the advancement of the game domestically (The BBL announced intentions to expand into several United Kingdom cities but neither Cardiff nor Swansea had been suggested).

Boxing

The United Kingdom played a key role in the evolution of modern boxing, with the codification of the rules of the sport known as the Queensberry Rules, named after John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry in 1867.^[41]Britain's first heavyweight world champion Bob Fitzsimmons made boxing history as the sport's first three-division world champion. Some of the best contemporary British boxers included; super-middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe, featherweight champion Naseem Hamed, and heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis. Welshman Calzaghe's display against Jeff Lacy in 2006 prompted Lacy's trainer to state "I have never seen a better performance than that in the world."

Great Britain at the Olympics

The United Kingdom competes in the Olympics as Great Britain during Olympic competition. The British Olympic Association is responsible for the promotion of the Olympic Movement within the United Kingdom and for the selection, leadership and management of Great Britain and Northern Ireland at every Olympic accredited event. By longstanding practice, athletes of Northern Ireland have the option of being part of either the Great Britain or Ireland teams.^[50]

After the 2004 Summer Olympics Great Britain was third in the all-time Summer Olympic medal count(ranked by gold medals), although the majority of the medals are accounted for by some very large tallies in the first few Olympic Games. British medal tallies for much of the post-war period were generally considered disappointing, but the 2000 Summer Olympics marked an upturn and this was sustained at the 2004 Summer Olympics when Great Britain finished tenth in the medal table and the 2008 where it finished fourth behind only China, the US and Russia. This was seen as a great success, and there was a victory parade through the streets of London. This trend continued in the 2012 Games in London. Great Britain again finished fourth in the total medal table (behind the US, China and Russia), but was third in the gold medal count behind the US and China. The sports in which the British team has won most medals in recent Summer Olympics include rowing, sailing, cycling and athletics. In addition to the 2012 Summer Olympics, London hosted the Games in 1908 and 1948.
Winter sports only play a minor role in British sporting life because the winters are not cold enough for them to be practised out of doors very much. Great Britain is not a leading nation at the Winter Olympics, but has had a few successes in sports such as figure skating, curling and bob skeleton. A number of athletes represented Great Britain in the freestyle skiing discipline when it debuted at the 2014 Winter Olympics.^[51] Snowboarder Jenny Jones made history at those Games as the first British competitor to win a medal in an event on snow when she took a bronze in the slopestyle competition