It all began several centuries ago.
All of the greatest world sporting events were being eaten away by increasing levels of bad behaviour. There was a great deal of cheating going on and the club managers and all the various types of sports authorities and controlling bodies were allowing it to happen. This applied to any kind of athletic activity requiring a certain skill or physical competence of a competitive nature, such as football, polo, baseball, golf, boxing, wrestling, tennis, racing, bowling, hunting, shooting and fishing; the list goes on. It seemed to be the case that as long as money was being made the competitors could carry on with any unsportsmanlike conduct of their choosing, as though it was being sanctioned by their paymasters, without bringing either the players or their masters into disrepute.
At first it was only the purists that didn’t like ball tampering and on-field sledging, etc., but as time went on it became apparent that this small percentage of supporters was gaining a voice. Looking back, it must have taken decades before attitudes changed and there were stronger and more effective calls for the principle of good sportsmanship to return globally to the world of sport. When the Fairness in Sport Commission was first created, little did anyone know just how far it would go. This became apparent when strict penalties for cheating and the like were brought in to curb unwanted behaviour. The most severe being a lifetime ban from ever participating in the relevant sport again.
This gave birth to the Bad Sport movement. At the time this only applied to a handful of disgraced athletes, ball team players, yacht crew members, alpine sport players, their various coaches and medics and referees and so on. It was initially a small number across a vast spectrum of every kind of competitive sport. However, as these numbers grew, and they certainly grew, the Bad Sport movement was fully formed. With this newly formed kind of sport-come-entertainment approach, promoting as much bad behaviour as possible, came the audiences that appreciated the genre. Over a century or so, the popularity of Bad Sport rose to a point where it became the only form of sport that drew the crowds.
Of course, there are rules, but they are very broad. Most people that watch sport now are, in the main, simply waiting to see them broken.
It is hard to look back and imagine what sport was like way back then.
For many, it must have been really boring.