Team sport is an activity in which participants form a group to play against each other in an effort to accomplish a shared goal. The ultimate goal of most team sports is to win by outscoring the opposing team. Team athletes learn to interact with one another and work together in a supportive and trusting environment to achieve their objectives. Some examples of team sports include hockey, American football, association football, soccer, basketball, baseball, tennis and volleyball. Some team sports may not involve an opposing team, such as mountaineering, where the relative difficulty of a climb or race is the measure of achievement.
Participation in team sports also helps children and adolescents develop social skills that can contribute to a wide range of positive outcomes later in life, including better grades at school and a more well-rounded outlook on life. For example, students who participate in team sports often learn to value their teammates’ talents and understand how their contributions can help the team achieve its goals. They also gain the ability to empathize with a teammate’s feelings when things do not go their way.
In professional sports teams, players and coaches are arranged into clubs that supply labor (primarily players), capital (stadiums) and land (fields). This arrangement allows teams to produce a saleable product — the game or contest — and sell it to spectators. In turn, the proceeds from ticket sales and broadcast rights are used to pay for inputs. As a result, team owners tend to seek and promote place identification, such as home-field advantage in soccer, baseball, hockey and basketball, where teams are familiar with the field’s idiosyncrasies and fans can cheer them on without debilitating travel expenses.
