Team sports share several characteristics in common, even though they are played on a range of different surfaces, with vastly different equipment, and with vastly different rules and scoring systems. Most if not all team sports are played between two opposing teams. Individual players usually occupy "positions" according to their athletic or psychological specialty. Team sports can be either timed, as with basketball, or not, as with baseball. Players on the team must not only work to their utmost ability in their specific position, but must also communicate with and assist their teammates. A stellar individual performance can be overshadowed by a team loss; likewise, one weak player can bring down the entire team. Therefore, team sports carry a certain amount of psychological stress that differs greatly from the stress placed on individual athletes. Individual sports include track and field exercises such as running; cycling; swimming; gymnastics; and golf. Tennis, although technically an individual sport, can form a third category of sports that are played between two individual opponents. Boxing falls into a similar category of one-on-one sports.

             Usually, individual sports are not considered to be spectator sports, whereas team sports receive more media attention. Classifying sports according to whether or not they are enjoyable to watch serves the media well, but generally all sports can be interesting. The ones that are considered to be spectator sports tend to be played on a specific area, such as a court or a field. Sports that are not classified as spectator sports such as cycling are interesting to watch but the participants whir past, too fast to appreciate the athleticism. Moreover, cycling or running, while intensely physically demanding, do not involve game play. Therefore, "spectator sports" would be a category consisting of different athletic games; "non-spectator sports," on the other hand, would be a category consisting of different athletic activities that cannot be called games.