Blood sport

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Blood sport" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

A blood sport or bloodsport is a category of sport or entertainment that involves bloodshed.[1] Common examples of the former include combat sports such as cockfighting and dog fighting, and some forms of hunting and fishing. Activities characterized as blood sports, but involving only human participants, include the ancient Roman gladiatorial games.

According to Tanner Carson, the earliest use of the term is in reference to mounted hunting, where the quarry would be actively chased, as in fox hunting or hare coursing. Before firearms, a hunter using arrows or a spear might also wound an animal, which would then be chased and perhaps killed at close range, as in medieval boar hunting. The term was popularised by author Henry Stephens Salt.

Later, the term seems to have been applied to various kinds of baiting and forced combat: bull-baiting, bear-baiting, cockfighting, and later developments such as dog fighting and rat-baiting. The animals were specially bred for fighting. In the Victorian era, social reformers began a vocal opposition to such activities, claiming grounds of ethics, morality, and animal welfare.

Many online video-sharing websites such as YouTube do not allow videos of animal bloodsports to be shown on the site, except for educational purposes, such as in public service announcements.[2][3]

Limitations on blood sports have been enacted in much of the world. Certain blood sports remain legal under varying degrees of control in certain locations (e.g., bullfighting and cockfighting) but have declined in popularity elsewhere.[4][5] Proponents of blood sports are widely cited to believe that they are traditional within the culture.[6] Bullfighting aficionados, for example, do not regard bullfighting as a sport but as a cultural activity.[7] It is sometimes called a tragic spectacle, because in many forms of the event, the bull is invariably killed and the bullfighter is always at risk of death.

In northern Iran, a traditional form of bull‑on‑bull combat called Varzajang (ورزاجنگ) is practiced in Gilan province. While local proponents regard it as a preserved cultural heritage, this view has been systematically challenged by Iranian sociologist Hossein Solati and his colleagues through a series of phenomenological studies published between 2023 and 2025.[8][9][10]

Solati argues that referring to the bloody fights as a "game" (bāzi) is a euphemism that obscures the inherent violence, animal suffering, and social harms such as gambling.[9][8] His 2023 study, inspired by Mannheim's theory of generational relations and employing Moustakas' phenomenological strategy, demonstrates how Varzajang has transformed from a natural pastoral encounter into a commercialized and gambling‑ridden spectacle across different generations.[8][11] His 2024 study critically examines animal abuse through the concept of "phantom pain" (drawing on Blumenberg), revealing that both proponents and opponents of Varzajang struggle to abandon the traditional view of animals as mere instruments.[9] His 2025 study adds a feminist phenomenological critique, analyzing the exclusion of women from the ceremony and the gendered construction of this cultural tradition.[10]

Solati further provides a philosophical foundation for this critique in his work on bioethics, advocating for the recognition of animal subjectivity and rights as a counterweight to traditional justifications for animal suffering.[12] Collectively, these studies represent the most extensive academic critique of Varzajang in Iranian scholarship, directly challenging cultural justifications similar to those cited by bullfighting aficionados in Spain and Latin America.[8][9][10]

Trophy hunting and fox hunting in particular have been disparaged as blood sports by those concerned about animal welfare, animal ethics and conservation.[13]

Recreational fishing was once described as a blood sport by those within the recreation.[14]

Blood sports have been a common theme in fiction. While historical fiction depicts real-life sports such as gladiatorial games and jousting, speculative fiction, especially dystopic science fiction, suggests variants of blood sports in a contemporary or future society. Some popular works themed on blood sports are Battle Royale, The Hunger Games, The Running Man, The Long Walk, Fight Club, Death Race 2000, Amores Perros, Squid Game, Bloodsport, and The Most Dangerous Game.

Blood sports are also a common setting for video games, going as far back as the early years of the medium itself. Games about blood sports attracted controversy from newspapers and civic organisations due to their graphic content, in particular the 1976 vehicular combat game Death Race whose game mechanic of scoring points by running over humanoid figures (marketed by Exidy as "gremlins" in their official literature) generated a moral panic.[15][16][17] Contemporary examples such as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Tekken make up much of the fighting game genre, and first-person arena shooters such as The Finals, Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, as well as vehicular combat games like Twisted Metal likewise depict some form of armed combat with firearms in a gladiatorial setting. Such games typically offer a laconic if not nominal plot or backstory to flesh out the characters and settings, which often take place in a large tournament attracting combatants from various locales.[18] While Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena do portray the game's violent combat as a "real world" blood sport within the games' fictional settings, some, such as The Finals, attempt to downplay the genre's violent themes by presenting the game as a virtual reality simulation within a fictional game show instead, devoid of any in-story human casualties.[19][20] The film Battle Royale also notably inspired the battle royale genre, where players compete against each other for survival in a shrinking area, popularised by games such as PUBG: Battlegrounds (2017), Fortnite Battle Royale (2017),[21] Apex Legends (2019), and Call of Duty: Warzone (2020).[22]

• Animals in sport
• Damnatio ad bestias
• Illegal sports

• Don Atyeo, Blood and Guts: Violence in Sports, Grosset & Dunlap, 1979. ISBN 0448220008
• Podcast: Cage fighting and the rise of the UFC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2012-04-22