The High Court is not being asked to rule on whether or not bridge is a sport, but merely on whether Sport England’s decision to reject the application to recognise bridge was lawful.
Advertisement
A spokesman for the EBU said: “When ruling on what constituted a sport in the 2011 Charities Act, parliament specifically included “mind sports”, stating that sport comprised “activities which promote health involving physical or mental skill or exertion”.
The English Bridge Union insists that the competitive game, which is synonymous with genteel British life, has health benefits for the mind.
At stake for bridge lovers is a potential source of funding as well as new opportunities to play, while for Sport England the risk if bridge succeeds is that the likes of chess, Scrabble and other “mind sports” will also want recognition and money.
The EBU, which has 55,000 members, claims the game has health benefits for the mind and is one of a smaller number of sports available to older people, to whom it brings a sense of inclusion and community.
Government body Sport England, taking its lead from the Council of Europe, defines a sport as an “activity aimed at improving physical fitness and well-being, forming social relations and gaining results in competition”.
If it’s all in the mind, then it’s just not sport.
If bridge was classed as a sport, it would be eligible for funding from Sport England.
Earlier this year, ministers were told that card games such as bridge should be a sport because they “train the mind”. It adopted a policy as to which sports it would recognise in order to focus its effort and resources.
Competitive bridge has the quiet intensity of televised poker or chess, and similar levels of physical activity.
Leaving aside the lifting of pints of beer, he suggested, the amount of physical activity involved in playing darts was arguably not much greater than that involved in shuffling and dealing cards to play bridge.
Advertisement
Mr Jaffey said that bridge might be a valuable and worthwhile pursuit, requiring mental agility and analysis, but it was not recognised as a sport – a position which had been repeatedly considered by successive governments with no change in the law.
