What is Informal Sport? Negotiating Contemporary Sporting Forms

Posted: 31/03/2025

As traditional sport participation stagnates or declines, flexible informal sporting forms are increasingly a focus for those with a vested interest in maximising participation in sport and physical activity. This study critiques existing definitions of informal sport as overly binary, largely unhelpful, and conceptually diffuse. We propose a more nuanced understanding of informal sport that explores participant proximity to the negotiation of practices that come to shape the sporting experience and therefore levels of (in)formality.

J. O’Connor, R. Jeanes, J. Magee, R. Spaaij, D. Penney, and S. Miyashita What is Informal Sport? Negotiating Contemporary Sporting Forms – Journal of Sport and Social Issues – Sage Journals (link)

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UniSport acknowledges and pays respect to all traditional custodians of the lands of which we run, jump and throw throughout Australia. We pay respect to elders both past, present and emerging.

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