Football is the most popular sports in United Kingdom. football is organised on a separate basis in each of the four constituent countries, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, that make up the United Kingdom (UK), with each having a national football association responsible for the overall management of football within their respective country. There is no United Kingdom national football team. Football has been the most popular sport in the UK since the 1860s. Rugby union, rugby league and cricket are other popular sports.
Sport in Ireland plays an important role in Irish society. The many sports played and followed in Ireland include Gaelic games, association football, horse racing, show jumping, greyhound racing, basketball, fishing, motorsport, boxing, tennis, hockey, golf, rowing, cricket, and rugby union.
Sport in the United Kingdom plays an important role in British culture and the United Kingdom has played a significant role in the organisation and spread of sporting culture globally. In the infancy of many organised sports, the Home Nations were heavily involved in setting out the formal rules of many sports and formed among the earliest separate governing bodies, national teams and domestic league competitions. After Partition of Ireland in 1922, some sports formed separate bodies for Northern Ireland, though many continued to be organised on an all-Ireland basis. For this reason, in many though not all sports, most domestic and international sport is carried on a Home Nations basis, and England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are recognised as national entities. This is in contrast to the majority of other states that participate in international sports which field a single national team to represent the entire polity.
The British Olympic Association is the National Olympic Committee for the United Kingdom. It represents the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom, but also incorporate representatives from eight of the eleven inhabited British Overseas Territories, and the three Crown Dependencies, who do not have their own separate Olympics teams.
The United Kingdom national football team are a football team that represents the United Kingdom. Despite football being the most popular sport in the country, the team has not played since 1965, as separate teams represent each home nation in all major international football tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship, as well as various friendlies. It is the home nations which are FIFA affiliated and not the United Kingdom as a whole.
Team GB is the brand name used since 1999 by the British Olympic Association (BOA) for their British Olympic team. The brand was developed after the nation's poor performance in the 1996 Summer Olympics, and is now a trademark of the BOA. It is meant to unify the team as one body, irrespective of each member athlete's particular sport. Officially, the team is the "Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic Team", although athletes from Northern Ireland may opt to compete under the auspices of the Olympic Federation of Ireland instead.
The United Kingdom has been represented at every modern Olympic Games. By end of the 2024 Summer Olympics, it is third in the all-time Summer Olympic medal table by overall number of medals, and fourth in number of gold medals won. London hosted the Summer Olympic Games in 1908, 1948 and 2012.
Sport plays a central role in Scottish culture. The temperate, oceanic climate has played a key part in the evolution of sport in Scotland, with all-weather sports like association football and golf dominating the national sporting consciousness. However, many other sports are played in the country, with popularity varying between sports and between regions.
A team representing Ireland as an independent state or polity has competed at the Summer Olympic Games since 1924, and at the Winter Olympic Games since 1992.
Campaign for a Scottish Olympic Team (C-ScOT) was a pressure group in Scotland, established in 2005, which aimed to persuade politicians to establish a team to represent Scotland at the Olympic Games.
The Sport Wales National Centre is a sports facility in Cardiff, Wales, set up to assist the development of elite athletes in Wales. The Centre, owned and operated by Sport Wales, was established by the then Sports Council for Wales in 1971 as the National Sports Centre for Wales. Renamed the Welsh Institute of Sport in 1994, it has been known as the Sport Wales National Centre since April 2010.
Sport in Wales plays a prominent role in Welsh culture. Like the other countries of the United Kingdom, Wales enjoys independent representation in major world sporting events such as the FIFA World Cup and in the Rugby World Cup, but competes as part of Great Britain in some other competitions, including the Olympics.
Kerrith Brown is a British judoka and President of the International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF).
Sport in Cardiff is dictated by, amongst other things, its position as the capital city of Wales, meaning that national home sporting fixtures are nearly always played in the city. All of Wales' multi-sports agencies and many of the country's sports governing bodies have their headquarters in Cardiff and the city's many top-quality venues have attracted world-famous sport events, sometimes unrelated to Cardiff or to Wales.
Since 1922, the United Kingdom has been made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom.
The British Triathlon Federation is the national governing body for triathlon, duathlon and associated multisport in Great Britain. It administers triathlon in England, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It represents Britain at the world body, the International Triathlon Union (ITU) and the regional body the European Triathlon Union (ETU). The BTF also selects athletes to represent the national team, at races such as the world triathlon series and the Olympic games.
The Great Britain Olympic football team was the men's football team that represented the United Kingdom at the Summer Olympic Games. The team was organised by the Football Association as the men's footballing representative of the British Olympic Association. The team only competed in the Olympic Games. In other international football tournaments, the Home Nations of the United Kingdom are represented by their own national teams, a situation which pre-dated the establishment of a GB team.
The Great Britain women's Olympic football team represent the United Kingdom in the women's football tournament at the Olympic Games. Normally, no team represents the whole of the United Kingdom in women's football, as separate teams represent England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Judo in the United Kingdom has a long history; the martial art being first introduced in 1899, and the first dojo, the Budokwai, being the oldest in Europe. The British Judo Association is the United Kingdom's official governing body for judo – in which British citizens have won eighteen Olympic medals.
Karate was first introduced in the United Kingdom by Vernon Bell, a judo instructor who attended karate classes with Henry Plée in Paris.
