ABSTRACT
These figures tell us that sport is an industry of massive proportions. How is it possible to go from hitting a ball for sheer pleasure to a £13.5 billion industry? If we consider the information contained in earlier chapters we can trace the development of a sporting industry in England through every century:
■ the fifteenth-century inn-keeper who kept dice for gambling and balls and skittles ■ acrobats and tumblers of the fairs and markets of the sixteenth century ■ aristocracy who developed horse racing in the seventeenth century ■ commercialisation of sport in the eighteenth century ■ professionalisation of sport in the nineteenth century ■ influence of television in the twentieth century.
