Professional Sports as a Part of the Nation Identity Essay

Thesis The use of public money is justified to build arenas encourages civic pride, positive emotions and social and community benefits with all together help build national identity of a country.

1. Professional Sports are considered national sports, which help build civic pride.

Sports become recognized as National sport 

National professional sport allows formation of the national identity through common culture, common experiences, sentiment of solidarity. (Bogdanov, 2011) 

Sport becomes part of national identity and a vehicle to express the sentiment. (Bogdanov, 2011)

Provides a venue to display Canadian national symbol. (E.g. waving of the Canadian flags, face painting of maple leafs, wearing of game jerseys with Canadian symbols such as maple leafs, Canadian flags, word Canada) (Sinha, 2013)

Winning awakens the sensation of pride in ones nation

Allows psychological and emotional bonding and attachment, a feeling of belonging and being a part of Canada as a nation. (Bogdanov, 2011)

The Canadian Anthem becomes more internalized, memorized and induces positive emotion when Canada national anthem is played during professional sport games. (Sinha, 2013)

Winning teams obtain national and international media attention, making one proud of belonging to a winning nation, or nation from which the winning players come from.

2. National Sports provide social and community benefits community is a building block of a nation.

Building of community integration and cohesion, members of the local community, which hosts a professional sports team, identify strongly with each other. (Bogdanov, 2011)

Building of collective identity, national sports teams create shared identity with sports team, where the fans have a sense of belonging.

Professional sports team provide a vehicle for individuals to share common experiences, emotions and excitement allows greater bonding and forming of relationships among fans of the same team.

Identification with national professional team provides a platform for shared values and national identity, as we are all Canadians regardless of race, socioeconomic status or gender.

3. National sports induce positive emotions.

Identification with a national sports team allows overall positive emotional responses leading to higher reported selfhappiness, better performance in various facets of life, and better performance in various facets of life. (Wallace, 2010)

More appreciation and recognition of the Canadian national symbols.

Provides a vehicle for a sense of national achievement  one particular sports team is conserved a representative of the overall nation and thus an individual fan considers a teams success as being personal success

Fans who share excitement and identify with the same sports team create an imagined community, a communion of shared individual values regardless of where the fans come from  total strangers become friends and fans positively react to each other. 

Sinha, M. (2013). Canadian Identity, 2013. Retrieved October 19, 2015, from http//www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89652x/89652x2015005eng.htm 

Bogdanov, D. (2011, June 30). Influence of National Sport Team Identity on National Identity. Retrieved October 19, 2015, from http//diginole.lib.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2446&context=etd 

Wallace, M. (2010, June 9). The importance of sport in forming a national identity, by Dr Matt Ashton. Retrieved October 19, 2015, from https//ntuworldcup.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/theimportanceofsportinforminganationalidentitybydrmattashton/