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People have been engaging in sports for thousands of years. However, unlike the high-tech, billion-dollar, industrialized sports of today, the first sports were almost certainly very simple. Even early humans may have competed to run the fastest or jump the highest. Sports may have been a way to have fun, prove physical dominance, or practice for hunting or warfare. Simple games may have involved basic activities such as swimming or throwing rocks or sticks. Because these games required no equipment or used only basic items picked up from the natural environment, little clear evidence of sporting activity exists in early humans’ archaeological record.

The sociology of sport is a growing field within sociology that analyzes the social dynamics of sport and the roles sporting activities serve in the social and cultural lives of athletes, fans, and society. Sports sociology differs from sports journalism and sports management in several important ways, and sociologists who study sports as a social institution must be careful to do so in an unbiased or non-ethnocentric manner. A growing number of professional academic societies and peer-reviewed journals geared towards the field have emerged. Sociologists who study sports utilize a variety of different theoretical approaches in their research, such as functionalist theory, conflict theory, symbolic interaction theory, or feminist theories.