Word.ws English Dictionary

spectator sports

spectator sports is the plural of spectator sport.

Meaning of spectator sport

Noun

spectator sport (plural spectator sports)

  1. A sporting activity which has a relatively high ratio of watchers to direct participants.
    • Today harness racing is a $430 million-a-year business, the fastest-growing spectator sport in the U.S.1953 October 5, “Yonkers Doodle”, in Time
  2. (idiomatic) Something, especially a process or activity, which is a popular object of observation; an activity which a person prefers to watch rather than to participate in.
    • Politics for me was strictly a spectator sport.1977, Muriel Clara Bradbrook, My Cambridge, →ISBN, page 120
  3. (idiomatic) An activity which consists of watching or observing.
    • Thompson, who's the digest's publisher, says bird watching is a hobby, a pastime and a spectator sport that can be enjoyed anywhere.2007 June 1, Brian Dakss, “Expert Offers Basics On What Some Call Nation's No. 1 Spectator Sport”, in CBS News, retrieved 31 Aug 2009

Questions about spectator sports

What is spectator sports the plural of?
Spectator sports is the plural of spectator sport.

Words near spectator sports in the dictionary

  1. spectator chair
  2. spectator chairs
  3. spectator ion
  4. spectator ions
  5. spectator sport
  6. spectator sports
  7. spectatordom
  8. spectatorial
  9. spectatorially
  10. spectatories
  11. spectatoring

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spectator sports (page history and authors); spectator sport (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “spectator sports.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spectator_sports. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.