I'd like to chip in that I don't care for sports, period. I'm totally uncompetitive... i don't see the point in proving you're better at something. It simply does not make me enjoy it more, but it would stress me out if I wasn't the best. And add in, that I'd be more likely to assault and hospitalize someone just to make sure he's not better anymore, rather than "out-skill" him. Using such a brute force attack would be my way of "outsmarting" them. "You're better at soccer? Here... try that again with two artificial kneecaps".
As a kid my parents did put me on different sports. I've did some martial arts, which weren't team sports in a way, but as soon as competition came in I stopped caring. I did some athletics thing a while, but also; then comes competition and I didn't want that. And I played soccer for a while. But I was always benched during games and pretty much last resort.
The entire financial stuff going on with for instance soccer players is silly IMO. You're good at it AND you have a way to show off (by being on television with that skill)... that apparently creates demand for player X. Get over with it, we're not trading people. And with that I can fully understand the loyalty thing Gomendosi adresses.
Back in high school I used to be one of the first to be picked for any teamsports, just because I was too rough, and people didn't want to be on the receiving end. I've broken noses, ankles and legs of other people in the past. Not neccesarily only for tackling someone, but also for kicking a ball way to hard at a goalie and him (and someones her) not being halfway decent enough to either get out of the way of the ball or stop it somehow. Unintentionally if I played a ball it always managed to find peoples faces. Knocked someone out once too. But I had pretty mild PE teachers who saw it wasn't on purpose... accidents happen, it just was a coincidence they happened a lot by my doing.
As a kid I used to watch a lot of wrestling, still do sometimes, but the more mainstream stuff doesn't really do it for me anymore. I've tried getting into watching MMA and UFC, but that's not acrobatic and too slow. I hate guys on the floor grappling and nothing else. So I sometimes end up checking out more of the backyard wrestling type stuff. Guess I want to see blood in sports. If talking wrestling I still think ECW back in the day (15 years ago or so) was the most awesome thing in wrestling ever.
I'm probably one of those people who would fully endorse something like "the running man", "the hunger games" or "battle royale"... or probably even gladiators. If there's imminent lifethreatening danger, that'll raise the stakes a bit more and make it more interesting IMO.