If there is one thing that the people of the United Kingdom love, it’s professional sports. It is a nation that lives for them like no other, and anyone you encounter in any British street is almost overwhelmingly likely to have some opinions or loyalties on the most popular sports in the UK. Football, rugby, and cricket are among the most loved and unifying forces all across the British Isles, bringing people together behind their local and national teams like nothing else can. But what is UK sport all about?
What is the national sport of England?
Importantly, this is a different question to that of what is the most popular sport in the UK, as in the last century it has become quite clear that the most popular sport in UK viewing and playing numbers has to go to football. In fact, the national sport of England isn’t even the second most popular, only coming in third in terms of the UK most popular sports by general opinion. That said, that third place spot is still one of the most popular sports in England, being the beloved English game of cricket. The UK national sport since the 1700s, cricket has not only been England’s national sport but also one of their most successful internationally, with England often being considered one of the best in the world (as one might hope competing in the UK national game).
Why is football so popular in England?
The confusion as to what is England’s national sport can mostly be traced back to the explosion of popularity of football in England in the UK over the last century or so. Football is the most popular sport by country-wide considerations without a doubt, with the country playing host to what is arguably the biggest sports league in the world, and certainly the most popular football league in the world by a considerable margin, being the Premier League. Probably the best known national sports league in the entire world, the Premier League is adored by fans globally and in the UK and is one of the greatest spectacles in sport, and almost certainly one of the most prestigious trophies in sport anywhere in the world. Shy of the world cup or an Olympic gold, the Premier League is the trophy to lift, without question.
Therefore, it seems quite natural that the most popular sport in England would be football, to the point it even often ends up mistakenly mentioned in response to questions of what’s England's national sport. The nation practically lives and breathes the sport, with for many people the team they support in football being as integral to their personal identity as their home town or their career choice. Not that this should come as a surprise to anyone who has visited the UK for any extended period of time, however. Football has always been one of the best sports to play with friends, to the point that playground football in schools is almost entirely ubiquitous. There is no better way, and indeed, thanks to the fact all you need is a ball and some players, no easier way to spend an afternoon than playing football with your mates, and it’s hardly a surprise that the nation has come to love the sport so dearly.
Why is the England national game cricket, then?
The national game of England not being football given its popularity may then seem a strange choice, but in actuality it makes a lot more sense than it may seem. The reasoning for this is twofold, and mostly comes down to the nation’s history in sport. If you were to ask what is the UK famous for historically in sport, before the turn of the 20th century its main international presence in the sporting world was through cricket. One of the most popular sports in UK history, if not comfortably the most popular before football’s rise, the England national sport has a history stretching back all the way to 1550. It was the one sport that the British Empire of the time brought with them on their colonisation, and it was around this time in the 1700s that it was declared the England national sport. In this regard, it is one of the more traditional sports of the British people, whereas football, while equally old, is considered perhaps more modern, at least in terms of the scope of its popularity.
What are the best sports to play in England?
Aside from the professional level, the most popular sports UK locals play unsurprisingly lines up quite well with the list of the sports played professionally. Without a doubt, the three largest in terms of professional and casual fan bases are Football, Cricket, and the one sport we haven’t mentioned so far, Rugby. Universally loved and played especially by the youth of the nation, these three games are a mainstay in schools nation-wide, such that anyone who went through the UK schooling system would doubtless have been introduced to them at some point, and more likely than not spent a healthy portion of their youth playing the games. All three of them are sports that are easy to get into, vastly popular with people of all ages, and staples of British culture in an irreplaceable way.
That all being said, they are far from the only popular sports in the UK. While they are the most played team sports by a comfortable margin, in terms of individual sports the two most stand-out ones in England are tennis and golf. Both of these sports have traditionally had much less of a culturally “cool” image, with golf especially traditionally being looked upon rather negatively as a “rich boy’s club”, but with the pandemic in 2020 and the total shutdown of team sports, golf saw a surge in popularity with the estimated number of players soaring from 2.5 million pre-pandemic to comfortably over twice that after the lockdown restrictions in England began to ease. With several thousand golf courses all across the country, and an increased interest thanks to a thriving professional scene and growing accessibility for new players, golf’s popularity in England looks only set to grow in the future.
How do I actually try these sports out?
With sports like golf and tennis, it’s fairly straightforward to find your way to a golf course or tennis club with a friend, rent some equipment, and give the sport a try. It’s as simple as paying the (normally rather cheap) entry fee and then just getting on with it at your own pace and having fun. By comparison, team sports such as football, rugby, and cricket require more effort to get into. While the equipment cost is far less in all cases, needing only a ball and some goal posts in the case of football, the difficulty tends to arise from the need for far more players to make up the numbers when compared to golf or tennis, which only really require a minimum of two.
Outside of just getting your mates together in the local park to kick a ball around, one of the most popular ways to get into playing football regularly is to join a Sunday league team. Generally made up of amateur players (often just groups of friends who all hang out at the same pub!) these are just local teams spread all across the country competing in local leagues against other such teams, mostly for the fun of playing the game. The main advantage of these leagues is that they ensure that you’ll always have a game, and a game with the right number of players to actually play properly. As a traditionally eleven-a-side game, rousing 21 of your mates down to the park for a game can be quite the task, and a Sunday league does most of that work for you. They are a great way to play the game regularly, and the strong sense of community they can bring about is an invaluable thing in and of itself, too!
What about professional sports in England?
Internationally, many team sports list England as one of their premier teams. Whether you are looking at the most popular ones such as football and rugby, or the more niche sports such as climbing or swimming, it seems that everywhere you look in professional sports the United Kingdom is represented. As a self-proclaimed sporty nation, this is hardly a surprise, and the sense of national pride that the UK tends to have towards its athletes on the world stage and at home can be a very unifying force for the British people. That being said, at least in the case of football, if you were to ask a long-time fan what is England known for on the world stage of sport, you would likely receive quite a mixed response.
Are England a good football team?
Surprisingly, this can be quite a controversial question. After all, they haven’t won the world cup since 1966, over 50 years ago, so they can’t be that good, right? Well, ultimately, these numbers don’t tell the full story. Across their entire history as a team, at an international level the England squad has managed to almost always be challenging towards the sharp end of the table, despite the incredible pressure put on them by the British public. The double-edged sword of a nation so passionate about football is that when the team loses, the backlash can be quite severe, to the point that some of the players faced abuse after England dropped out of the 2022 world cup in the quarter-finals. In general, it is this incredible pressure that leads to people not wishing to give the England squad the recognition they deserve, as when you actually look at the quality of football that the team plays, there is no doubt they are truly a world-class team.
Sport is an integral part of what makes the United Kingdom the country that it is, with the national identity of the country drawing strongly on both the professional showings of the world-class teams England puts out across all sports they compete in, as well as the love of sport shown by the common folk of the land. Sport of all varieties brings the British people together both to play and to watch, and you’ll hardly find an Englishman without some interest in it.
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