ABSTRACT
The author examines aesthetic sports, in which aesthetic judgment partly determines competitive outcomes. In distinguishing these from purposive sports, rare blended cases, which are purposive and aesthetic by turns, are discussed, including certain rodeo events and (controversially) boxing. Aesthetic sports are argued, contra Suits, to retain game status, with the author siding with Meier on constitutive rules and proposing that outcomes in such sports may be ‘prelusified’ in different ways. Following McFee, aesthetic sports are no more problematic than purposive sport in which officials must make judgment calls. Building on Hume’s account of expert aesthetic judgment of art on the basis of uniform human nature, the virtual consensus among judges in aesthetic sports is further secured, in ambiguous cases, by partly artificial judgment procedures.