Glossary

Practitioner sport

Practitioner sport is a sport whose events are consumed primarily by the athletes who compete in them, not by an external audience. Its value driver is governance credibility — the integrity of competition, the legitimacy of selection, and the authority of the institutional recognition behind the credential — rather than audience size or participation volume. Revenue, where it exists, typically flows through the legitimacy chain: national federations, continental confederations, national Olympic committees, and the IOC itself. The diagnostic applies at the level of a specific discipline, not an entire federation — a single governing body can contain more than one category.