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

sport Sport is a physical activity or game, often Competition, competitive and organization, organized, that maintains or improves physical ability and skills. Sport may provide enjoyment to participants and entertainment to spectators. The numbe ...

s. 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 A professional is a member of a profession or any person who work (human activity), works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the partic ...

players which have

team A team is a group of individuals (human or non-human) working together to achieve their goal. As defined by Professor Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, " team is a group of people who are interdependent with respect to in ...

s 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 Turner movement, first realised at Volkspark Hasenheide in Berlin in 1811, was the origin of the modern sports clubs.

Organization

Larger sports clubs are characterized by having professional and amateur departments in various sports such as bike polo, football,

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appro ...

futsal Futsal is a variant of association football played between two teams of five players each on a court smaller than a football pitch. Its rules are based on the Laws of the Game (association football), Laws of the Game of association football, and i ...

cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...

volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Summ ...

handball Handball (also known as team handball, European handball, Olympic handball or indoor handball) is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each (six outcourt players and a goalkeeper) pass a ball using their hands with the aim of thr ...

, rink hockey, bowling,

water polo Water polo is a competitive sport, competitive team sport played in water between two teams of seven players each. The game consists of four quarters in which the teams attempt to score goals by throwing the water polo ball, ball into the oppo ...

, rugby, track and field athletics,

boxing Boxing is a combat sport and martial art. Taking place in a boxing ring, it involves two people – usually wearing protective equipment, such as boxing glove, protective gloves, hand wraps, and mouthguards – throwing Punch (combat), punch ...

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

cycling Cycling, also known as bicycling or biking, is the activity of riding a bicycle or other types of pedal-driven human-powered vehicles such as balance bikes, unicycles, tricycles, and quadricycles. Cycling is practised around the world fo ...

tennis Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...

, rowing,

gymnastics Gymnastics is a group of sport that includes physical exercises requiring Balance (ability), balance, Strength training, strength, Flexibility (anatomy), flexibility, agility, Motor coordination, coordination, artistry and endurance. The movem ...

, and others, including less traditional sports such as airsoft, billiards, e-sports,

orienteering Orienteering is a group of sports that involve using a map and compass to navigation, navigate from point to point in diverse and usually unfamiliar terrain whilst moving at speed. Participants are given a topographical map, usually a specia ...

, paintball, or

roller derby Roller derby is a roller skating contact sport played on an oval track by two teams of five skaters. It is played by approximately 1,250 amateur leaguesA Roller Derby league is synonymous with an individual club or team in other team sports, as ...

. 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 Anónima Desportiva) such as Sport Lisboa e Benfica and Sporting Clube de Portugal, or Spanish SADs ( Sociedad Anónima Deportiva) Real Zaragoza, S.A.D. and Real Betis Balompié S.A.D., as well as Italian clubs like Società Sportiva Lazio S.p.A.). Some sports teams are owned and financed by a single non-sports

company A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of legal people, whether Natural person, natural, Juridical person, juridical or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members ...

, for example the several sports teams owned by

Red Bull GmbH Red Bull GmbH () is an Austrian multinational private conglomerate company that created the Red Bull range of energy drinks. It is also known for its sponsorship, wide range of sporting events and Works team, teams. The headquarters of Red Bull ...

and collectively known as Red Bulls. 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

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 Athletics is a group of sporting events that involves competitive running, jumping and throwing. The most common types of athletics competitions are track and field, road running, cross country running, cross-country running, and racewalking. ...

, where a distance runner may compete for a

track and field Track and field (or athletics in British English) is a sport that includes Competition#Sports, athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name used in North America is derived from where the sport takes place, a ru ...

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.Managing Athlete Registrations
. England Athletics. Retrieved 2019-06-03.

Sports clubs around the world

In many regions of the world like

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

West Asia West Asia (also called Western Asia or Southwest Asia) is the westernmost region of Asia. As defined by most academics, UN bodies and other institutions, the subregion consists of Anatolia, the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Mesopotamia, the Armenian ...

, the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographic region of Asia below the Himalayas which projects into the Indian Ocean between the Bay of Bengal to the east and the Arabian Sea to the west. It is now divided between Bangladesh, India, and Pakista ...

or Central and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

, 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 The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

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 league A sports league is a group of individual athletes, sports teams or clubs who form a league to compete against each other and gain points in a specific sport. At its simplest, it may be a local group of amateur athletes who form teams among them ...

s, 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 The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East div ...

), two hockey teams ( Buffalo Sabres and

Rochester Americans The Rochester Americans (colloquially known as the Amerks) are a professional ice hockey team based in Rochester, New York. They are the American Hockey League affiliate of the National Hockey League's Buffalo Sabres. The team plays its home g ...

), 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 American football, referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada and also known as gridiron football, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular American football field, field with goalposts at e ...

and

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey in North America) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an Ice rink, ice skating rink with Ice hockey rink, lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. Tw ...

, respectively). In the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, 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

( Cardiff Cricket Club),

rugby union Rugby union football, commonly known simply as rugby union in English-speaking countries and rugby 15/XV in non-English-speaking world, Anglophone Europe, or often just rugby, is a Contact sport#Terminology, close-contact team sport that orig ...

(it is the major shareholder of the semi-professional Cardiff Rugby Club),

field hockey Field hockey (or simply referred to as hockey in some countries where ice hockey is not popular) is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with 11 players in total, made up of 10 field players and a goalk ...

( 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 Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...

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 Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

). Many clubs internationally describe themselves as

football club In association football, a football club (or association football club, alternatively soccer club) is a sports club that acts as an entity through which association football teams organise their sporting activities. The club can exist either as ...

s ("FC", "Football Club" in British English and "Fußball-Club" in German; "CF", ''Clube de Futebol'' in Portuguese and ''Club de Fútbol'' 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 München; 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 most North American teams (somewhat ambiguously as "football" in

North American English North American English (NAmE) encompasses the English language as spoken in both the United States and Canada. Because of their related histories and cultures, plus the similarities between the pronunciations (accents), vocabulary, and grammar ...

refers to North American gridiron-style football) still use "F.C." in their name instead (e.g. FC Dallas or Toronto FC).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sports Club Sports terminology Clubs and societies

Organization

Membership

Sports clubs around the world

See also

References