Ontology field guide
By NOSIBLE Research
SportsML Categories
SportsML separates sport disciplines from competition types so tournament coverage can be compared consistently across seasons.
Sports reporting combines different disciplines, competition formats and tournament stages. A World Cup, league match and Olympic event are not interchangeable observations. SportsML supplies controlled categories for those distinctions and supports consistent exchange across publishers and data systems.[1]
World applies independent sport and event-type labels to canonical events. Researchers can test whether coverage composition improves audience, rights or sponsor models beyond raw article volume. This page provides every category, World counts, an annual padel comparison and reproducible observations.[2]
- Categories
- 336 categories
- Structure
- Flat, no hierarchy
- World events labelled
- 8.3%
- Stable codes
- Since v1
- Release data
- CC0
Foundations
SportsML standardises sports and competition types without measuring commercial performance
IPTC designed SportsML as an open interchange standard for sports schedules, results, standings and event reports. Its controlled categories keep disciplines and competition concepts stable across providers. World uses an IPTC-aligned subset for sport and event-type classification across the complete event corpus.[1]
World classifies what the event record reports. It does not identify a complete fixture, audience, rights contract, sponsorship exposure or revenue contribution. Sport and event type are independent fields, not a parent-child path. Researchers should validate both assignment slots and join attention to audited commercial data separately.[2]
Categories
SportsML separates 316 sports categories from 20 independent competition-event types
SportsML contains 336 peer-level categories: 316 sport disciplines and 20 competition-event types. World assigns at least one SportsML field to 1,266,796 canonical events, or 8.3% of World V1.2. The explorer exposes each definition and count while keeping the two fields structurally separate for analysis.[1]
1,266,796 of 15,311,040 World events carry labels from SportsML Categories. Select a category to see its count and both relevant shares.
3x3 basketball
3x3 basketball
Definition
Text about 3x3 basketball, the competitive team sport with three players per side on a half-court under a distinct FIBA ruleset for limited-duration games and tournament events.
Potential research use
Three-player basketball events
- Code
- 3x3 basketball
- Events with label
- 10,570
- Share of labelled
- 0.8%
- Share of World
- 0.1%
Events with label is the selected count. Label share divides it by 1,266,796 assigned events; World share divides it by all 15,311,040 events.
Representative World V1.2 events
One strong classified example per available year, with up to ten years shown.
Team USA Wins Men's Basketball Gold at World University Games
Coverage 18Three Tennessee High School Basketball Players Convicted of Rape
Coverage 16IOC Adds 3x3 Basketball to 2020 Tokyo Olympics for Urban Appeal
Coverage 78Three Georgetown Basketball Players Face Restraining Orders for Assault
Coverage 38Nebraska Adds Two Football Players to Basketball for Big Ten Tournament
Coverage 25US Women Win Historic 3x3 Basketball Gold in Tokyo Olympic Debut
Coverage 378Northwest Boys Basketball Overcome 0-3 Start to Win Three Straight Games
Coverage 36US 3x3 Women's Basketball Team Loses Opener to Germany in Paris
Coverage 130Jumpshot Singapore Hits World No. 35 in FIBA 3x3 Rankings
Coverage 51Parker, Delle Donne, 1996 Olympic Team Enshrined in Basketball Hall of Fame
Coverage 538
Browse categories to compare definitions, World V1.2 statistics and representative classified events.
Example usage 1 of 3
Example Usage: Padel coverage nearly triples as global participation and commercial attention expand
From 2019 to 2025, padel rises from 34.3 to 94.9 assignments per 100,000 World events, a 2.77-fold increase after controlling for corpus growth. Its share of SportsML assignments rises from 0.38% to 1.17%, a 3.11-fold increase. Both measures show that padel gains attention within and beyond sport coverage.[2][3]
Tennis accounts for 4.05% of sport assignments in 2019 and 4.49% in 2025. Those endpoints provide scale; they do not establish a stable path or control group. The commercial question is whether audiences, sponsorship inventory and media-rights prices keep pace with reporting. World supplies the labels, not the outcome.[1][4][5]
The composition chart divides padel and tennis assignments by all SportsML sport assignments in each complete calendar year. The trend chart divides padel assignments by all World events over a trailing 12-month window. Raw counts are denominator diagnostics only. Neither measure proves participation, audiences, rights fees, sponsorship demand, commercial value or investment returns in this World sample.
Example usage 2 of 3
Example Usage: Olympic breakdancing creates a new classified attention cycle at Paris 2024
Breaking is Olympic breakdancing. It debuted at Paris 2024 and creates a distinct classified attention cycle inside the wider Games. Normalized coverage rises from 339 to 1,272 events per million compared with the matched Tokyo window, a 3.75-fold increase. The daily lines show when the new discipline enters and leaves the news cycle.[6]
That separation matters to sponsors, broadcasters and consumer brands evaluating a new sport rather than the Olympics as one aggregate property. SportsML creates comparable discipline-level clocks for attention, endorsement and audience tests. The method separates a genuine launch from host-city, medal-table and corpus-growth effects.[6]
- Breaking
- +933 per million
- 3x3 basketball
- +201 per million
- Sport climbing
- -2 per million
- Skateboarding
- -808 per million
The matched Tokyo and Paris Olympic windows contain 266 and 317 SportsML-assigned events. Each sport count is divided by all English World events in its window, so the comparison controls for corpus growth rather than relying on raw event counts.
Example usage 3 of 3
Example Usage: Miami and Las Vegas add two new Formula One attention windows
The United States Formula One calendar expands from Austin alone in 2019 to Miami, Austin and Las Vegas in 2024. Fourteen-day normalized SportsML attention produces one late-year peak in 2019 and three distinct peaks in 2024. Classified race-window coverage rises from 30 to 126 events per million across the wider comparison.[7]
Each peak defines a commercial clock for airlines, casinos, hotels, sponsors, broadcasters and host cities. SportsML separates Formula One from other racing and sports news. Researchers can compare local exposure, sponsorship and attention decay across races instead of pooling an expanded calendar into one yearly observation.[8]
- Normalized coverage
- +95.2 per million
- Scheduled US races
- +2
The fixed English cohorts cover April through mid-December 2019 and 2024. Formula One and motor-car-racing assignments naming a United States, Austin, Miami or Las Vegas Grand Prix are pooled across the current and prior 13 days, then divided by all English World events in the same window.
Data and sources
Download SportsML and References
Downloads
Download categories and counts as CSV, or the complete machine-readable release as JSON.
Release details and citation files
ManifestRelease READMECC0 license and scopeCitation fileChangelog
Need the complete World event schema? Open the World data dictionary.
References
- [1]International Press Telecommunications Council. SportsML: The open standard for sports data. SportsML-G2 3.1.
- [2]International Padel Federation. World Padel Report 2024.
- [3]International Padel Federation. World Padel Report 2025.
- [4]Playtomic and Strategy&. Global Padel Report 2025.
- [5]Premier Padel. Multi-year media, streaming and sponsorship partnership with Red Bull.
- [6]Paris 2024 Organising Committee. Official report of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024.
- [7]Formula One. (2022). Miami Grand Prix official race page.
- [8]Formula One. (2023). Las Vegas Grand Prix official race page.
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