The Big Question: Is there too much sport?

Too long, too hard, too intense. In recent years, the complaints have become louder and fiercer, as professional athletes feel the impact of an ever-increasing number of events, races and tournaments in a packed sporting calendar.

In a sporting world driven by cash and clout, the phenomenon has spread across different sports – tennis, golf, motor racing and football, among others.

In 2015, Formula One hosted 19 grands prix. A decade on, there are currently a record 24 races in five continents around the world.

Tennis made its already gruelling 11-month schedule even more punishing by increasing the field and stretching out more of its 1000-level events – the highest level of the sport after Grand Slams and Tour Finals – from a week to 12 days.

The advent of the NBA Cup in 2023 added just one extra game to the National Basketball Association (NBA) calendar, but it is already a packed six-month, 82-game regular-season slog with back-to-back games.

Football, the world’s most lucrative sport, is probably the biggest culprit. A proxy war between its most powerful continental association Uefa and global governing body Fifa helped birth the latest addition to elite football’s packed schedule with the 32-team, 63-match Club World Cup, which took place in June and July.

Football’s epicentre, Europe, meanwhile, revamped the format of its golden goose last season, increasing the number of Champions League matches per season from 125 to 189, meaning the winners will play up to 17 games.

Ballon d’Or winner in 2024 Rodri warned last September that players were close to going on strike in protest, adding “if it keeps this way, it will be a moment that we have no other option”.

While that has not come to pass, players’ union Fifpro has been scathing in its criticism. Said high-performance expert and Fifpro consultant Dr Darren Burgess: “You’ve got the perfect storm of how not to treat a human.”

In tennis, recent tournaments in China have intensified the spotlight on the calendar after a spate of walkovers and retirements during matches.

There were seven at the Shanghai Masters, while at the China Open, five of 12 matches ended prematurely during a single day.

With mandatory requirements for top players to feature in all Grand Slams, 10 WTA 1000 tournaments and six 500-level tournaments, six-time Major winner Iga Swiatek noted that “the season is too long and too intense”.

She added: “It’s just impossible to squeeze it in the schedule. Maybe I will have to choose some tournaments and skip them, even though they are mandatory.

“We have to be smart about it – not really unfortunately care about the rules and just think what’s healthy for us.”

Several players have backed the women’s world No. 2, including men’s world No. 1 and fellow six-time Slam champion Carlos Alcaraz, who said “they have to do something with the schedule”.

But while Swiatek has enjoyed a swathe of support, not all are against it. Olympic champion and world No. 11 Zheng Qinwen said: “I don’t think for professional players, the calendar is too much because the strongest players survive, and that’s the rules in my head.”

So, is there too much sport?

Mental and physical health

The most obvious repercussion of a more taxing sporting schedule is its potential impact on athletes’ well-being.

Three-time Slam finalist Casper Ruud, who played in 25 tournaments in 2024, the second-highest among men’s players, in May likened the ATP’s ranking system to “a rat race” which compels players to continue playing despite injuries.

Alex de Minaur, the world No. 7 who played the third-most tournaments in 2024 (23), highlighted the mental fatigue, telling the BBC: “Players’ careers are going to get shorter because they’re going to burn out mentally. There is just too much tennis.”

“What’s not normal is that for the last three or four years I’ve had two days off, gone straight into pre-season and straight into the new season again. It’s just never ending,” added the Australian.

Sports scientist Professor Wilhelm Bloch of the Sports University Cologne sees similar issues in football.

He told Deutsche Welle in 2024: “Footballers are often playing at or above their performance limit. The recovery times after matches are too short... This is not sustainable in the long term... you’ll have a lot of absentees and a lot more injuries.”

He suggested there could be an increasing number of players who are “completely spent at the age of 29”, rather than retiring in their mid-thirties.

According to Fifpro, Argentina forward Julian Alvarez’s 2023-24 season lasted 13 months and featured 75 appearances for club and country.

His Argentina teammate and all-time football great Lionel Messi had nine senior appearances by the time he turned 18. His heir apparent Lamine Yamal, who finished second in the Ballon d’Or voting in September, has played over 100 times by the same age and is already a key player for club and country.

Bloch highlighted that players need around six weeks per year away from the game but he noted that “this is not possible for those who play internationals between club seasons, especially when they are also forced to play pre-season friendlies in faraway places to boost club coffers”.

Money talks

Underpinning the rat race of rankings and the expanding competition schedule is the influx of cash pouring into sport.

There is record prize money on the tennis and golf circuits, while the amounts on offer in football and basketball have produced top earners like

Cristiano Ronaldo, who in October became football’s first billionaire,

reported Bloomberg. He joins a rarefied elite that includes basketball greats Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and LeBron James, golfer Tiger Woods and tennis player Roger Federer.

Aside from making some athletes rich, sports also rakes in tourism dollars, with an approximate value of US$609 billion (S$792 billion) and a 17.5 per cent annual growth rate, per the Sports Tourism Market Report and Forecast.

George Pyne, chief executive of investment firm Bruin Capital, in 2024 called sports an “undervalued category” which will see “more sophisticated capital – sovereign-wealth funds, private equity – come in as things evolve”.

The injection of cash has enabled the expansion of F1 into the Middle East and China and catalysed the global spread of tennis tournaments, along with other professional sports.

So, are the increasing demands on athletes an inevitable consequence?

Two-time former Ballon d’Or winner and former Bayern Munich chief executive Karl-Heinz Rummenigge told German sports magazine Kicker: “There are more matches this season because of the Club World Cup, but this tournament only happens once every four years. Many players – along with their agents – have contributed to this situation and trapped themselves. They constantly demand rising salaries, which forces clubs to look for additional sources of income. That’s why new formats appear.

“On the other hand, I don’t see a willingness on their part to give up salary. This contradiction needs to be clearly pointed out.”

Meanwhile, Serena Williams’ former coach Rennae Stubbs, noted that while Alcaraz said “there are too many mandatory tournaments”, he has signed up for exhibition matches at the end of the season.

In 2024, the Spaniard admitted that the US$1.5 million participation fee he pocketed for four days of Six Kings Slam action in Saudi Arabia was “a good motivation” to take part. He will also play in the 2025 edition.

In golf, many top players flocked to the riches on offer on the breakaway LIV Golf tour and while they enjoyed a reduced workload, they have griped at the repercussions relating to their participation at Majors and the Ryder Cup.

Does sport’s quality suffer?

With sport becoming bigger business than ever and more expensive to watch live, is there a danger that an oversaturated calendar could diminish the spectacle?

World Cup winner and second-most expensive footballer Kylian Mbappe told British GQ in 2024: “We’re getting closer to the NBA model, with seasons of 70 games. Personally, I’m not against playing that many matches, but we won’t be able to be good every time and give the public the spectacle they expect.

“In the NBA, players don’t play every game and franchises practise load management. But if I said: ‘I’m tired, I’m not playing on Saturday,’ it wouldn’t go down well.

“The spectator who pays for his ticket , and who may only see you once during the season, wants to see a performance worthy of the name, and that’s understandable.”

Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, who won four NBA titles and an Olympic gold as a head coach, thinks the schedule should be shortened to 65 games.

He said previously: “I’m concerned about the product because I think we are asking way too much of our players. The game has never been more difficult to play at a high level night after night after night. We should account for that.”

At the Chicago Bulls, he played alongside Jordan, who did not miss a regular-season game in nine of his 15 campaigns. Kerr himself did not miss a game for four seasons between 1993 and 1997.

But the five-time NBA champion insists that things have changed.

Explained Kerr: “Back then, you played the game at a very small circumference. Now, it’s a big, wide circle, and you have to cover the entire court. Everyone is playing faster. The numbers do show that our players and the NBA are covering way more ground than they were 15, 20 years ago.”

Then there is the issue of the scarcity value of sport. The four years that go by between World Cups and Olympics add to the appeal and lore of the tournament and fuel fan interest.

Even in sports which work on a yearly schedule, there can be too much of a good thing.

Amid the expansion of the F1 calendar, four-time champion Sebastian Vettel told Motorsport.com in 2021: “We should not have that many races... Maybe it’s too many races for the people to watch. It’s not special any more if there’s that many.”

Environmental impact

The sporting schedule does not just impact athletes and fans, it has a wider effect on the environment.

Research by the BBC in 2023 projected that the 2022-23 emissions from team and fan travel for just the three European continental club competitions would amount to 368,388 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

The Professional Footballers’ Association’s sustainability spokesman David Wheeler accused Uefa of a “dereliction of duty” over its climate responsibilities, telling the BBC that “those organisations and many clubs want to make as much money as possible, regardless of the harm caused”.

Meanwhile, F1’s carbon dioxide equivalent in 2022 was 223,031 tonnes, similar to Tonga’s.

While the sport has vowed to reduce its impact on the environment, Vettel told The Wall Street Jornal in March that “it is a fossil fuel party that happens nearly every week now”.

But he opined that F1 has the potential to be a sporting leader in the climate space, saying: “I see a huge opportunity because Formula One’s got the money. The question is, do they want to spend that money or not?”

The haves, and have-nots

Beyond the glitz of F1, athletes can experience the pros and cons of a sporting schedule based on which rung of the ladder they operate at.

Jobbing tennis or golf players are not burdened by mandatory tournament requirements, but the number of competitions they can play in depends on how many they can qualify for and how they can stretch their tight budgets.

There is a similar divide between the haves and have-nots in women’s football.

Mariona Caldentey played 64 times for Barcelona and Spain in the 2023-24 season, while many women’s players featured in around half of that, with the average being 33 games per season, according to Fifpro.

The union flagged the issue of “underload”, highlighting that some female players who were at the 2024 Paris Olympics played fewer than 10 games in the year leading up to the Games.

Said Fifpro’s director of policy and strategic relations for women’s football Alex Culvin: “There is a two-speed development of women’s football.

“There are players who are squeezed by the calendar and the high cadence of games; this is an issue that is rightly gaining more attention. Yet, there are a larger proportion of players who do not have enough competitive matches and are often overlooked.”