Sports films have been made for over a century, starting as comedies or dramas but more recently incorporating documentary styles. The sports genre is popular for films because they have a built-in audience of fans of the particular sport. Filmmakers can easily advertise their sports films at sporting events or on sports TV programs to reach this target audience. Sports films generally fall into two categories - documentary style films that use interviews and footage of the real athlete or team, and fictional films that follow an imagined character's career using fictional sporting events and emotional scenes about success and failure.

1. Matt Wood
Genre Analysis
Sports films have been around for over a century and they were someof the
original films. They started out mainly as comedies or dramas in the early-mid
20th
century but since then there have been moredocumentary style films.
The sports genre often appears in films as there is an easy to find and target
audience – fans of the particular sportin the film. Thereforeit is easy for film
makers to advertisetheir films. They may do so at one of the sport’s events or
during one of the TV programmes.
Sportfilms generally fall into one of two categories; a
documentary or a film following a fictional career.
In the documentary style sports films, the film is usually
made up of various interviews fromthe sports star or
members of a team, footageof the sports that the
athlete/team participated in, interviews with family and
friends as well as narration. An example of a documentary
style sports filmis ‘Ronaldo’
Films that follow a fictional character often have; footage
of the fictional sporting event, the athlete and his family
and friends and emotive scenes. The story normally
contains both success and failure to makethe film more
engaging. The theme of working hard and achieving a
dream is also a convention of these films. An example of a
fictional sports filmis ‘Goal!’