SYSK TRENDING - The Extraordinary Benefits of Watching Sports

Something You Should Know

Watching sports offers surprising mental, emotional, and social benefits beyond entertainment. Research shows fans experience greater happiness, stronger community ties, and improved cognitive health.

Key takeaways

• Sports fandom boosts mental well-being and reduces depression.

Transcript preview

With all the recent excitement surrounding the NBA and Stanley Cup finals and the World Cup, you might wonder, why do millions of people spend hours every week watching sports? Most people think of it as entertainment, a way to relax or pass the time. But what if watching sports is actually doing something good for your mind, your emotions, and even your health? That's why today's S-Y-SK trending topic is the extraordinary benefits of watching sports. In my conversation with writer Larry Olmstead who has explored the science and psychology behind sports fandom, we'll discuss the research that suggests being a sports fan can create a sense of belonging, strengthen social connections, reduce stress, and even boost feelings of happiness and well-being. You'll learn how cheering for your favorite team may be more beneficial than you ever realized. Right after you'll realize. this. Chances are you are a sports fan or you live with or work with sports fans. Professional and college sports are huge. And yet with all that's been written about sports in books and magazines and blogs and talked about on podcasts and radio and portrayed in movies and television, there isn't much about the fans. And yet, sports without the fans. And yet, sports without the fans, well it's just a bunch of people playing a game the fans are the biggest part so writer Larry Olmstead decided to take a close look at sports fans who they are why they're fans and what if anything does being a sports fan do for you he's written a book about it called fans how watching sports makes us happier healthier and more understanding hey Larry welcome oh it's great to be with you when you look at sports in essence sports fans are people a lot of people watching other people play a game what is it about watching other people other people play a game that pulls people in and makes them such big fans you know I've given that a lot of thoughts because people a lot of people who aren't sports fan say oh it's a waste of time watching but they never say that about like watching movies or Broadway plays you know it seems specific to sports so I tried they really figure out what's different sports and kind of every other form of popular entertainment and i think the two big things are for fans you know most people want want a sense of community belonging it's it's human nature in our DNA to be tribal creatures and sports gives you that in a really accessible way that you know other kinds of entertainment don't you know you feel like if you're you know whatever a Mets fan you feel like you're part of the crowd even when you're watching alone at home which like i'm a star war but I don't get that when I watch Star Wars on my couch I know I'm just watching a movie I don't feel transported so that's one big part of it is it's just sense of community and the other thing is if the unpredictable real-time nature of sports you know it defies our dvoir streaming culture because it's no fun if you know what happens before you watch it and again you know I didn't have to watch nine Star Wars movies to know the good guys were eventually gonna win and you know most entertainment is predictable is predictable in that way that way not you have upsets and Cinderella stories and you could be watching that game when it's a perfect game or a historic moment and that sort of anything can happen nature of it is really compelling. What's interesting what you said about community because when you watch a Star Wars movie and the good guys when Hans Solo and Luke Skywalker beat the bad guys you was the movie watcher the movie goer don't say ooh we won. But you will often hear sports fans when their team wins say, ooh, we won. They do, but actually what you bring up, it's a sort of a classic of sports psychology research. A lot of times, fans always say we won, but a lot of times they say they lost. And it's like a psychological defense mechanism we have to distance ourselves from our team's failure, which is why, you know, even if your team is like 50-50 over the long term, studies have shown that sports fans gain happiness because the winning, because the winning is more satisfying than the losing is disappointing because we have a number of these kind of circuit breakers that allow us to to overlook the losses so every win is that much sweeter and yes you're right they feel like I mean studies people say that even when they're Turing at home they feel like they have an impact on the game it's also interesting to me to watch people watching on television criticizing the play criticize help why did he why did he do that like I would have never done that like they know better. Yeah absolutely and part of that was really I think driven a lot by the growth of sports talk radio you know in the past couple of decades where there's a lot of opportunities for people to call in and kind of be Monday morning quarterbacks it's made everybody more critical but one of the more interest you know I I didn't know what I would find when I decided to see what being a sports fan did to us and one of the sort of unforeseen benefits is is really good for your brain and cognitive ability especially uh... fighting cognitive decline as we each and it's very similar to like if you do to do go or crossword puzzles every day it's a real exercise for your brain and that's gotten even more so with with uh... all of the new statistics especially baseball the kind of money ball saber metrics uh... people have to be more intellectual about their approach to being sports fans in order to be critical and be informed and especially and also to play fantasy sports sports I want to talk more about the benefits because I don't think people ever think about that and it's pretty interesting that there are these benefits but but before we get into that fundamentally what do you think is the difference between the person who says you know sports are a waste of time or they're very passive sports watcher you know they'll watch the world series or they'll watch the super Bowl but you know that's about it versus the guy who like goes to the