Sports in Illuminatia
The pursuit of organized, unorganized, competitive, and non-competitive sports, athletics, games of skill and strength, competitions, tournaments, contests, and conquests—for competitive and recreational reasons—are embraced as a healthy and inclusive part of Illuminatian culture.
The most popular sport in Illuminatia, sportsball, is played by clubs across the continent on a professional, amateur, hobbyist, and informal recreational basis. The continent-wide body governing professional sportsball competition is the National Sportsball League, which has affiliate clubs in cities throughout the continent.
Other popular organized competitive sports in Illuminatia include competitive corporal defenestration and its variant competitive inanimate defenestration, competitive calisthenics, competitive elimination, anticompetitiveball, and many other minor sports practiced primarily on an amateur level or with regional popularity.
Illuminatian sports, when played on a professional basis for commercial purposes, customarily are expected to enrich their local and regional economies economically. Commerce associated with sports competitions and the spectatorship thereof, while it will normally result in some profit for the benefit of the team or club itself, is also expected to flow to associated businesses and the local government. The construction of sports stadiums is always a commercial investment by commercial interests and never receive public funds. As a result, sports and athletics avoid becoming a burden for local public authorities. Sports teams will often provide significant charitable contributions to an assortment of local non-profits in addition to contributions to local non-profit athletics clubs as a way of fueling athletic development and sparking interest in the sport in question among the general public.
Sports gambling, while not prohibited in Illuminatia, is regulated in such a way as to discourage betting or management of gambling apparatuses by people who have any real or perceived association with the subjects being betted upon, including ownership interest, financial association, business concern, employment, familial connection, and any other link which might allow a bettor to exert influence upon the outcome of the subject being wagered upon. Any person who might place a wager upon a sports game or any other subject who cannot disprove their association with the subject of the bet risks being held liable for monetary damages and other sanctions by the Office of Gambling and Gaming (OGG).