Legitimate Sport Research Articles

Latvian Sports Regulation in Transition: Navigating Historical Evolution and Contemporary Development Trends

This comprehensive analysis delves into the intricate realm of sports law and policies in Latvia, exploring the historical evolution, administrative framework, and policy landscapes that shape the country's sports sector. The text highlights Latvia's transition from the Centralized Soviet Model to a more autonomous sports system post-independence, reflecting the nation's historical context and pursuit of sporting excellence. It examines the interaction between EU regulations and internal sports governance, emphasizing the balance between market-regulating rules and legitimate sports governance. The study also discusses recent legislative amendments in response to geopolitical events that has shaken the Eastern Europe, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, showcasing Latvia's proactive approach to safeguarding national interests and ethical standards in sports. Furthermore, insights into the implementation of National Anti-Doping Regulations underscore Latvia's commitment to maintaining integrity in sports. The administrative framework involving various stakeholders, including governmental bodies and non-governmental organizations, is analysed to provide a holistic view of sports policy planning and stakeholder engagement in Latvia. Overall, this research sheds light on the evolving landscape of sports law in Latvia and the country's efforts to promote athletic development, fair play, and good governance in sports. The findings will contribute to a deeper understanding of the factors and forces shaping the sports sector in the country. Keywords: sports law and geopolitics, sports governance, sports policies, EU sports law, Latvia

Exploring the Embodied Experience of Disabilities in eSports: A Study on First Person Shooters

The eSports industry has experienced a remarkable surge, transforming competitive video games into professional sports. Despite its rapid expansion and recognition as legitimate sports worldwide, unresolved debates persist, challenging our understanding of eSports as a distinct phenomenon. This article aims to bridge existing gaps in the eSports literature by investigating how disabilities are experienced in the interplay between physical and virtual bodies in specific eSports titles called "First Person Shooters" (FPS). FPS games demand swift reaction times, exceptional hand-eye coordination, and in-depth understanding of in-game maps and equipment, making them an opportune domain to explore player engagement and the interaction between physical and virtual bodies. Recognizing that eSports are constructed around an able and competitive body, this research explores the effects of personalization practices in eSports, which may normalize impairments and lead to new organizational processes and participation for people with disabilities. By analyzing the relationship between physical and virtual bodies, mediated by different peripherals, the paper sheds light on the exclusion experienced by eSports athletes in FPS games. Through this study, we gain better insights into the phenomenon of eSports and its potential similarities to traditional sports in terms of discrimination. The research contributes to understanding the challenges faced by individuals with disabilities in eSports and presents recommendations for practice and future research.

CAS FOR ESPORTS: REALITY OR UTOPIA?

The authors examine the peculiarities of dispute resolution in esports and the current state of reforms. The author analyzes the factors influencing the choice of jurisdiction for consideration of disputes in the field of esports in the absence of clear rules for determining the jurisdiction and category of disputes in the field of esports. Attention is drawn to the possible options for jurisdiction in the field of esports. The author notes the peculiarities of dispute resolution within the framework of litigation, commercial arbitration, sports arbitration court and special arbitration bodies or persons authorized to consider disputes and their legal regulation. The author describes the advantages and disadvantages of the existing arbitration bodies and focuses on the mechanisms that have the potential to improve dispute resolution in the esports industry. Given the practice of dispute resolution, it is summarized that arbitration and which institutions are currently the main places for dispute resolution in the field of esports. It is concluded that due to the increasing inclusion of virtual sports (video games) in the category of sports, they should have the same protection regime, and therefore, the resolution of disputes related to them should fall under the jurisdiction of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Therefore, the Court of Arbitration for Sport may potentially serve as the final court of appeal for any sports organization, if provided for in its regulations. At the same time, it is currently problematic that the Court of Arbitration for Sport has not yet recognised esports as a legitimate sport and has therefore not yet made any arbitral awards in cybersport disputes. This is the basis for the creation of a specialized court that would be able to consider a wide range of technical disputes related to video games. However, the author substantiates why the creation of a new institution is less effective than reforming the existing Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The Rise of Ping-Pong as a Sport in France (1932–1933)

Abstract Following the 1929 stock market crash, the “fashionable” sport of ping-pong in France took advantage of the European crisis and international restructuring to recruit foreign players and promote the image of table tennis as a legitimate sport. During a period in which hygiene and eugenics were promoted through the practice of collective and orderly gymnastics, table tennis was a driving force behind a shift in French physical culture. Modern representations of sport are analyzed through the corporal values conveyed (speed and sweat), which contributed to the adoption of a more energetic lifestyle that was still uncommon in French physical culture. Moreover, the transformation of ping-pong into a sport between 1932 and 1933 was also visible in the display of the standardization of its equipment, the work of the written press, and manufacturers and retailers, even if the latter sometimes used it as a simple promotional technique.

Perceptions of NCAA Division II and III Athletic directors regarding the emergence of e-sports

ABSTRACT This study assessed perspectives of NCAA D-II and D-III Athletics Directors (ADs) regarding the possible implementation of competitive e-Sports on college campuses. It examines if ADs view e-Sports as a legitimate sport in parallel with others that are traditionally offered by athletic departments, and their perspective regarding where on college campuses e-Sports should be housed. Results demonstrated that ADs view e-Sports differently than other sport programs (F = 13.439; p = .001), and this was key in determining where they thought e-Sports programs should be administered (F = 6.696; p = .013). However, some expressed a willingness to consider implementing e-Sports due to the opportunity it could present (F = 2.209; p = .021). These results suggest that an apparent conflict exists between ADs’ perceptions of e-Sports and of its potential as a growth opportunity. However, if colleges decide to implement e-Sports as an athletic program, consideration should be given to governance concerns, budgetary concerns, and the health and wellness of participants.

Doping as a barrier in universal acceptance of esports

PurposeEsports has been emerging as a multi-billion dollar industry by attracting players, viewers, advertisers and investors across the globe. Even though there are plenty of professional titles present, only a few have been considered mainstream due to lack of formal governance mechanisms, presence of corruption and cheating mechanisms. “Doping” is one such practice where the players try to gain unfair advantage over their competitors, causing major hindrance in esports development. This qualitative study would draw insights from their perceptions about different doping mechanisms and possible recommendations to curb them.Design/methodology/approachThis study has analyzed the semi-structured interviews of selected esports professionals to draw insights from their perceptions about different doping mechanisms and possible recommendations to curb them. This qualitative study would explore the content of their interviews for extracting relevant themes and subthemes.FindingsThe findings of this study have made significant contributions to deeply lacking literature about the esports industry and barriers it faces in order to be considered as a legitimate sport. The study has extracted contemporary and new emerging themes about the rising trends in the industry and their impact on society and the way we see sports as a whole. Moreover, this study dwells upon the rampant drug abuse persisting in this industry and how it offers itself as a barrier to the legitimization of esports as a viable global industry.Originality/valueThis study provides an on-ground reality reports on esports and various malpractices rampant in the industry by conducting interviews with various industry professionals and analyzing them through a thematic analysis method using an inductive approach.

E-Sports: a legitimate sport?

E-Sports: a legitimate sport?

Discourses on foxhunting in the public sphere: a Q methodological study

The foxhunting debate conjures up dichotomies on party politics, the rural/urban divide, class, animal welfare, animal rights and the right to hunt them. In the lead-up to the 2004 hunting ban, animals themselves became peripheral in the political debate on hunting. This paper presents a contemporary analysis of shared viewpoints on hunting that highlights the centrality of animals to debates over foxhunting. I use Q methodology to identify four discourses on hunting in public debates. Liberal progressives are against hunting on the basis that it is cruel, unnecessary and outdated. Critical-radicals oppose hunting from a structural perspective, encompassing critiques of power and class. Countryside managers support hunting as a form of wildlife management and emphasise the differences across animals. Sporting libertarians support hunting as a legitimate sport. These findings demonstrate the complexity of the hunting debate in the public sphere that is simplified and exaggerated in mainstream media and Westminster.

Social Responsibility of the Legitimate Sports Organizations in China: An Examination of the Chinese Athletic Association

Social Responsibility of the Legitimate Sports Organizations in China: An Examination of the Chinese Athletic Association

Can Some Computer Games Be a Sport?

This paper focuses on the problem of social legitimization of eSport in the context of traditional sports. Its objective is to investigate knowledge and attitudes towards eSports, as well as their recognition as legitimate sports. The first part of the paper consists of the definition and differentiation between eSport and eSports. The second part provides an analysis of various definitions of sport and comparison of main qualities of eSport and sport. The third part includes identification of the most problematic features of eSports in public opinion and their analysis.

The Vulnerability of Athletes to Brain Degeneration due to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Caused by Repetitive, Mild-traumatic Brain Injuries in Football and other Sports

The power of social forces can be overwhelming. This is especially shocking in the case of activities that damage the brain. Take boxing as an example. Over 87 years ago Harrison Martland, a New Jersey pathologist, described the clinical aspects of a progressive neurological deterioration (‘punch drunk’) that occurred after repetitive brain trauma in boxers [1]. This was the first report of a CTE-like disorder. Martland’s findings have been largely ignored all these years and boxing continues to this day as a legitimate and well-attended sport. Individuals with CTE may show symptoms of dementia such as memory loss, aggression, confusion and depression, which generally appear years or even decades after the trauma. They may even become suicidal.

What is a Sports Injury?

Current sports injury reporting systems lack a common conceptual basis. We propose a conceptual foundation as a basis for the recording of health problems associated with participation in sports, based on the notion of impairment used by the World Health Organization. We provide definitions of sports impairment concepts to represent the perspectives of health services, the participants in sports and physical exercise themselves, and sports institutions. For each perspective, the duration of the causative event is used as the norm for separating concepts into those denoting impairment conditions sustained instantly and those developing gradually over time. Regarding sports impairment sustained in isolated events, 'sports injury' denotes the loss of bodily function or structure that is the object of observations in clinical examinations; 'sports trauma' is defined as an immediate sensation of pain, discomfort or loss of functioning that is the object of athlete self-evaluations; and 'sports incapacity' is the sidelining of an athlete because of a health evaluation made by a legitimate sports authority that is the object of time loss observations. Correspondingly, sports impairment caused by excessive bouts of physical exercise is denoted as 'sports disease' (overuse syndrome) when observed by health service professionals during clinical examinations, 'sports illness' when observed by the athlete in self-evaluations, and 'sports sickness' when recorded as time loss from sports participation by a sports body representative. We propose a concerted development effort in this area that takes advantage of concurrent ontology management resources and involves the international sporting community in building terminology systems that have broad relevance.

Don’t bring it on: the case against cheerleading as a collegiate sport

The 2010 Quinnipiac cheerleading case raises interesting questions about the nature of both cheerleading and sport, as well as about the moral character of each. In this paper we explore some of those questions, and argue that no form of college cheerleading currently in existence deserves, from a moral point of view, to be recognized as a sport for Title IX purposes. To reach that conclusion, we evaluate cheerleading using a quasi-legal argument based on the NCAA’s definition of sport and conclude that cheerleading fails to qualify as a legitimate sport. A philosophical argument leads to the same conclusion, primarily because of the essential entertainment-aspect of cheerleading. We then examine a consequentialist moral case for making cheerleading an intercollegiate sport and argue that the balance of moral reasons is against doing so. Finally, we look at cheerleading’s newest offspring – Acrobatics and Tumbling, and STUNT – and express our moral reservations about their current claims to be worthy of Title IX recognition. While we would not claim that any single one of our arguments is decisive, we are convinced that the cumulative weight of the arguments against granting intercollegiate sport status to any of the forms of cheerleading or its derivatives is, at present, irresistible.

"Gently Caress Me, I Love Chris Jericho": Pro Wrestling Fans "Marking Out"

"Gently Caress Me, I Love Chris Jericho": Pro Wrestling Fans "Marking Out"

‘Legitimate Sport’ or Criminal Assault? What are the Roles of the Rules and the Rule-Makers in Determining Criminal Liability for Violence on the Sports Field?

‘Legitimate Sport’ or Criminal Assault? What are the Roles of the Rules and the Rule-Makers in Determining Criminal Liability for Violence on the Sports Field?

Taking Professional Wrestling to the Mat: A Look at the Appeal and Potential Effects of Professional Wrestling on Children

Professional wrestling (PW) has gained a firm foothold in American culture and appears to be here to stay. Children comprise a large portion of its audience, much to the dismay of many parents and clinicians. Society has struggled with how to respond to their children’s fascination with PW, a novel hybrid between sports and entertainment. Parents expose children to sports, thinking they will learn healthy ways of managing conflict and aggression. However, PW is not a sport. Its values are the exact opposite of traditional sportsmanship; it demonstrates to children that cheating and verbal intimidation are effective problem-solving techniques. Because PW resembles sports, children risk applying its values to legitimate sports, as well as other realms of life. Parents can prevent this association by differentiating PW from sports, and the entertainment industry can prevent it by stopping their aggressive marketing of PW to children.

Professional Wrestling: Why the Bad Guy Wins

In professional wrestling, more often than not, the guy wins. The rules are broken. Referees are powerless to prevent the villain's humiliation and of the helpless victim. But in other professional sports, the games are fair and the virtues of training and hard work combined with talent determine the winner. This is the dominant ideology which characterizes American professional sports. Professional wrestling stands in sharp contrast to this ideal of competitive athletics. As a result, the debate over whether professional wrestling is a legitimate sport has been carried on for decades. But for many wrestling fans, that debate is irrelevant. Professional wrestling continues to be a staple of weekend cable television programming and its pay-per-view events continue to make millions of dollars annually. Wrestling's draw large audiences without the legitimacy that is bestowed upon other professional sports by the mainstream media. This paper looks at the popular pleasure that is offered by professional wrestling's bad guys and a closer examination of the appeal of three recent wrestling villains. John Fiske describes professional wrestling as an example of one of the pleasures offered by television which can evade, resist, or scandalize ideology and social control (1987 240). In a postmodern world, wrestling appears to perform many of the functions of the carnival as described by Bakhtin. The carnival, according to Bakhtin, was characterized by laughter excessiveness, particularly of the body, by taste, offensiveness, and degradation (Fiske 1987, 241). For Bakhtin, the carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order (Fiske 1987, 241). As Fiske points out, television may provide comparatively little of the carnivalesque, but it is concerning itself more and more with the language of (1987 249). Wrestling is an extreme form of television, like MTV, which uses a visual style characterized by an insistence on the importance of the signifier, physical sensations, the surface and the body. In wrestling today, the bodies of the most popular villains are usually of such an extreme nature that they even make the atypical physiques of professional footbal and basketball players look normal by comparison. The bodies of professional wrestlers are excessively beautiful and muscular or they can be extraordinarily large and obese or grotesque. A recent wrestler on the scene is Giant Gonzales who has been described as being eight feet tall and weighing more than four-hundred pounds. Another wrestler, the Narcissist Lex Lugar is so preoccupied with his own body that he brings a mirror ringside, where he usually spends more time admiring his own physique than he does doing battle in the ring. For this wrestler and the wrestling fans, the meaning of Lex Lugar is completely found on the surface, on the physicality of the body. As the French scientist of signs Roland Barthes says, for the wrestling public matters is not what it thinks but what it (1972 15). And the signs that the public sees with a wrestler like Lex Lugar are absolutely clear. There is no confusion and the role of the wrestler is obvious. Barthes writes: What is portrayed by wrestling is therefore an ideal understanding of things; it is the euphoria of men raised for awhile above the constitutive ambiguity of everyday situations and placed before the panoramic view of univocal Nature, in which signs at last correspond to causes, without obstacle, wtihout evasion, without contradiction (1972 25). When the tall, dark brooding figure of one of television's recent popular wrestlers, The Undertaker, enters the ring accompanied by a dracula-like manager carrying an urn reportedly filled with the ashes of the dead, there is no ambiguity about the role he is playing. The signs are excessive. Similar to the pleasure of the carnival, Barthes also describes wrestling, not as a sport, but as a spectacle of excess (1972 15). …

Gambling: The misunderstood sport— a problem in social definition

Abstract The prevailing social science perspective views gambling as a socially deviant activity with detrimental consequences for the individual and society. This paper presents an alternative perspective which views gambling as human play sharing much of the structural and functional components of acceptable sport activity. Gambling has conventional rules for defining participation, for determining legitimate winning and losing, and for judging expert performance. It also has regulatory commissions, standardized equipment, symbols, an element of sociability, and it promotes a collective validation of the basic values of society. This perspective allows the social scientist to examine gambling behavior in a theoretical framework which focuses on the features of gambling shared in common with other legitimate sport activity. This paper explores two popular forms of social gambling, race track and casino, showing how they reflect contemporary American culture while they provide recreation for players. We have found among recreational gamblers a well developed subculture that places their form of play directly in the mainstream of American values, despite the moral critics who proclaim gambling to be a major social problem. In fact, the gambling problem may be better understood as an ideological conflict between gamblers and the moral judges of the proprietary limits and functions of sports.