Glossary

Spectator sport

Spectator sport is a sport whose value driver is audience attention. Revenue comes predominantly from media rights and sponsorship, priced against the size and engagement of an external audience. Most of the vocabulary used across international sport governance — reach, engagement, growth — is native to this category. Federations operating disciplines that are actually practitioner or participant sports often inherit spectator-sport vocabulary by default, because no alternative vocabulary has existed until now.