Professional sports

Professional sports are organized athletic competitions in which athletes receive pay or other compensation for competing. They range from individual contests to team leagues.

Sports league: An organization that coordinates recurring competitions among teams or individual competitors under shared rules. Leagues set schedules, membership, and competition rules for many professional sports.
Association football: A team sport in which players advance a ball primarily with their feet and score by sending it into the opposing goal. Its domestic leagues and international competitions form one of the world’s largest professional sports systems.
Jackie Robinson: An American baseball player who broke Major League Baseball’s modern color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. His career exposed the racial exclusion embedded in a major professional league.
Sports labor movement: Efforts by athletes and other sports workers to organize and improve pay, rights, and working conditions. Professional athletes have organized to contest restrictions and bargain over compensation.
Amateur sport: Sport pursued without compensation for athletic participation, though rules about permissible expenses and rewards vary. The professional-amateur distinction centers on whether athletes may earn compensation for competing.
Player contract: A legal agreement defining an athlete’s obligations, compensation, and relationship with a team or organization. Contracts formalize athletes’ work and compensation in professional competition.
National Basketball Association: A North American professional basketball league founded in 1946 and now composed of teams in the United States and Canada. The NBA illustrates the commercial scale and international reach of a professional team league.
Billie Jean King: An American tennis player and advocate who helped advance equal pay and opportunities for women in sport. Her organizing helped establish the professional women’s tennis circuit.
Free agency: A status allowing an athlete to negotiate employment with teams after specified contractual or league conditions are met. Free agency changed how professional teams recruit players and how athletes bargain for pay.
College athletics: Organized sports programs associated with colleges and universities, involving student athletes and institutional competition. College systems combine education with high-level competition and have contested boundaries around athlete pay.

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