Professional Sports and Professional Sports media being only a 20th century phenomenon is a very interesting topic
Not sure I agree 100% with that though
Kind of an unfair topic because the only legit professional sports before 1900 was Baseball and Boxing. You can argue that there was a lack of interest in professional sports pre 1900 because the industry was not as big yet
To be fair here, no industry in entertainment was even close to the ones we have now. There were way less entertainment options for people in the 19th century (until the 1890s )compared to now. The media landscape was completely different as well. No television, no internet no social media platforms, no radio. They could only communicate with telegraphs back then. No cars, airplanes, amusement parks, bicycles, motorcycles, etc either.
The modern entertainment industry ( Hollywood, nba, nfl, mlb, nhl, premier league soccer, show business/music ) is a pure product of the 20th century. Only social media is a actual creation of the 21st century.
So in the 19th century, until the 1890s, you have these following entertainment options
Going to the local church, opera, theater, or saloon. Reading, dueling, warmongering, lynching, politicking. And add baseball and boxing for the second half of that century.
the movie picture was invented in 1895 by two French brothers, the lumières. And 20-25 years later came the birth of the modern Hollywood industry.
The most famous musicians /artists before 1900 were probably gifted pianists, opera singers and Opera conductors. ( Richard Wagner, Franz lizst, Frédéric Chopin, JS Bach, Chevalier de Saint George- a mixed breh- then Mozart, Vivaldi, Haydn, etc). The modern music industry as we all know now only started between the 1920s and 1950s.
Various Professional baseball leagues existed before 1900 but the first ever World Series, the October/fall classic, was officially played in 1903. The MLB- Major League Baseball only became a official league in 1903 when the national league (founded in 1876) and the American League (founded in 1901)established their mutual cooperation when they both signed the national agreement in 1903. And despite that, both leagues remained legally separate entities until 2000, when they finally merged into a single organization led by the
commissioner of baseball.
boxing was big in the last quarter of the 19th century (John Sullivan, gentleman Jim Corbett etc but you can argue that it became extremely popular when jack Johnson beat Jim Jeffries in 1910. At the time, with all the hype and glamour around the event, in the context of disfranchisement, segregation and racism, it was the first ever big fight ever in professional boxing history. No other boxing fight before had the same level of media/newspapers coverage and public interest as the Johnson/Jeffries fight. The entire world was watching the fight. It was appropriately called the fight of the century back then. As soon as Johnson won, race riots erupted in every state of the USA. White men everywhere felt bad after the loss of Jeffries, they were mad and sad, and Black men were happy and proud.
