Sports entertainment is a type of spectacle which presents an ostensibly competitive event using a high level of theatrical flourish and extravagant presentation, with the purpose of entertaining an audience. Unlike typical athletics and games, which are conducted for competition, sportsmanship, exercise or personal recreation, the primary product of sports entertainment is performance for an audience's benefit, thus they are never practiced privately.
Commonly, but not in all cases, the outcomes are predetermined (such cases are not considered to be fixed, however, as it is an open secret).
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The term was coined by the World Wrestling Federation during the 1980s as a description for professional wrestling, although precursors have been found going back to February 1935, when Toronto Star sports editor Lou Marsh described professional wrestling as "sportive entertainment." In 1989, the term was used in a case made by the company to the New Jersey Senate that professional wrestling was "sports entertainment" and thus should not continue to be regulated like a directly competitive sport.
Some sports entertainment events are forms of actual sports, such as exhibition basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters association, or football with the Lingerie Football League. Others are modifications of sport for entertainment purposes: many types of professional wrestling, which derived from traditional wrestling, roller derby, derived from roller skating, and more recently the various mascot races held at numerous Major League Baseball games in-between innings.[1]
Some forms of sports entertainment involve taking competitive games which are usually considered minor, such as dodgeball, poker, or rock-paper-scissors, and televising them with trumped-up theatrics, such as celebrity competitors or elaborate audiovisual packages.
Sports entertainment has a stigma of being mindless pop culture, in some cases glorifying violence for the sake of entertainment[2], and has been criticized as such in popular media, often through lampooning: the film Idiocracy portrays a future where sports entertainment permeates the global culture: the president is an active champion professional wrestler and capital punishment consists of a combination demolition derby, monster truck event and gladiator duel, and is a highly popular television broadcast. Fiction with a dystopian future setting often portrays deadly futuristic games as popular sports entertainment, including the movie The Running Man, video games such as Smash TV and the Twisted Metal series, and the roleplaying game Shadowrun, which features Urban Brawl and Combat Biking
Many notable names in the USA openly admit enjoying certain forms of sports entertainment while many others have taken part in it or made paid contributions. Professional basketball player Shaquille O'Neal has a reputation as a long time pro-wrestling fan and attends WWE events several times per year, and Floyd Mayweather expressed interest in fulfilling a WWE career after he retires from professional boxing. Chicago Bears American football player Brian Urlacher, who admits to being a pro wrestling fan, made an attempt to leave football to wrestle for TNA Wrestling full time until the Chicago Bears forced him to stop.
The widespread popularity in the United States for the main form of sports entertainment, professional wrestling, has caused politicians to use it to reach voters, particularly young males. President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain recorded video messages for broadcast on the WWE to encourage the audience of WWE Monday Night Raw to vote, and George W Bush did a prerecorded video for the WWE's annual Tribute to the Troops show.