According to Tanner Carson, the earliest use of the term is in reference to mounted hunting, where the quarry would be actively chased, as in fox hunting or hare coursing. Before firearms, a hunter using arrows or a spear might also wound an animal, which would then be chased and perhaps killed at close range, as in medievalboar hunting. The term was popularised by author Henry Stephens Salt.
Many online video-sharing websites such as YouTube do not allow videos of animal bloodsports to be shown on the site, except for educational purposes, such as in public service announcements.[2][3]
Limitations on blood sports have been enacted in much of the world. Certain blood sports remain legal under varying degrees of control in certain locations (e.g., bullfighting and cockfighting) but have declined in popularity elsewhere.[4][5] Proponents of blood sports are widely cited to believe that they are traditional within the culture.[6] Bullfighting aficionados, for example, do not regard bullfighting as a sport but as a cultural activity.[7] It is sometimes called a tragic spectacle, because in many forms of the event, the bull is invariably killed and the bullfighter is always at risk of death.
Blood sports are also a common setting for video games, going as far back as the early years of the medium itself. Games about blood sports attracted controversy from newspapers and civic organisations due to their graphic content, in particular the 1976 vehicular combat game Death Race whose game mechanic of scoring points by running over humanoid figures (marketed by Exidy as "gremlins" in their official literature) generated a moral panic.[10][11][12] Contemporary examples such as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Tekken make up much of the fighting game genre, and first-personarena shooters such as The Finals, Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, as well as vehicular combat games like Twisted Metal likewise depict some form of armed combat with firearms in a gladiatorial setting. Such games typically offer a laconic if not nominal plot or backstory to flesh out the characters and settings, which often take place in a large tournament attracting combatants from various locales.[13] While Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena do portray the game's violent combat as a "real world" blood sport within the games' fictional settings, some, such as The Finals, attempt to downplay the games' violent themes by presenting the game as a virtual reality simulation within a fictional game show instead, devoid of any in-story human casualties.[14][15] The film Battle Royale also notably inspired the battle royale genre, where players compete against each other for survival in a shrinking area, popularised by games such as PUBG: Battlegrounds (2017), Fortnite Battle Royale (2017),[16]Apex Legends (2019) and Call of Duty: Warzone (2020).[17]
^New York Times News Service (December 28, 1976). "'Death Race': Cartoon or Morbid?". The Post-Crescent. p. A-1. Retrieved 2017-08-30 – via Newspapers.com.
