When I was reading through the UK parties’ manifestos in the run up to the General Election this summer, I was quite surprised to find out that their aims for sport were grouped together with those for culture and media. The main reason for this is that they are all part of the Department for Sport, Media & Culture, but it got me thinking about the role that sport plays in both British culture and in the cultures of other countries around the world.
During the Olympic Games this summer it was clear that sport definitely seems to interact with culture. The USA winning both the women’s and the men’s basketball was not exactly a surprise to most people. Indeed, the men’s team has taken gold every year since 1992, with the exception of in 2004 when they only achieved bronze. Although the USA always does well in the Olympics, helped by their large population and abundance of funding for sport, this particular winning streak attests to the key cultural role that basketball holds there. Certain other sports also hold a lot of cultural weight in the USA. For example, baseball and softball are very popular there yet they are not really played at all in the UK or France. This is the reason why these two sports were not included in the 2012 London games, the 2016 Rio games or the 2024 Paris games. They are however returning in 2028 when the Olympics are due to be held in Los Angeles, highlighting the importance of these sports in American culture.
Undoubtably the sport that is most important to British culture is football. Roughly 2.1 million people in England play at least twice a month and lots more watch the sport regularly and define themselves by the team they support. The significance of football teams to both local and national culture can be seen by the hoards of people who wear team shirts on match days, and the multitude of fans who regularly travel across the country to support their team at away matches. Cricket and netball are two other supports which play a significant role in British culture, with both of them also being played across Commonwealth countries.
These two sports, along with football, are taught in the majority of schools across the country so children grow up knowing the rules and therefore understanding the game if they go to watch it being played. This is important because sports, especially team ones, can be pretty confusing to watch if you are unaware of the rules they are playing by. Therefore, the sports that are taught in schools across the world are the ones that play a role in each country’s culture, with American football and Aussie rules only really being taught in their respective countries.
As well as being a component of culture itself, sport also interacts with other aspects of a nation’s culture. For example, the All Blacks (New Zealand’s national rugby team) have a tradition of performing the Haka before each international game. The Haka is a traditional Māori dance that is a source of pride for all New Zealanders and that is now synonymous with rugby there. Moreover, when the Modern Olympics were started, there were competitions for music, architecture, painting and sculpture as well as for sport. Clearly the former are a part of culture and their inclusion highlights that the Olympic Games are not only sporting, but also cultural events. Even in today’s Games, the cultural aspect of the Olympics is showcased in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies as well as the way in which the sports are performed and viewed by both live and TV audiences, just like how film and theatre are created and performed for an audience.
Overall, I do think that sport should count as culture but I think that grouping it specifically with media and culture in a single Government Department could potentially be quite dangerous because it gives the Government the opportunity to forget about other aspects of culture. This was clear in several of the manifestos which did not include their aims for arts and theatre under the culture heading and, instead, focused solely on sport, which, whilst important, should not be used to cover up a lack of care for other important aspects of culture.
