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It seems logical to think of many sporting events as "games" or "gaming events", but we don't use the expression "game" to describe all types of sporting competitions. For example, in very few references will you find the expression "Olympic game of archery", even though it is certainly an adequate expression. You are more likely to find people speaking (or writing) of "the Olympic sport of archery". But what is the difference between "game" and "sport", if any? It is largely a matter of diction (word choice).

Every sport embraces competition and uses some sort of scoring. Games embrace competition and use some form of scoring, too. But a "sport" is generally thought of as more a practice than merely a set of rules, whereas a game is usually imagined as two or more participants engaging in a specific competition. In other words, the sport of golf is played out every day on thousands of courses around the world but an individual game of golf is only played in one place and one time.

A game is something finite whereas a sport is infinite, at least when you look at the activity involved in a game versus a sport. So while the semantic uses of these words are technically very similar in day-to-day use we distinguish between a game and a sport by identifying the game as an instance of a sport and the sport as the collection of all games (past, present, and future) played according to the same or very similar rules.

Sports thus fall into the world of games and we could say that sports games are only a subset of all games, in that a sporting event is considered to be more formal and procedural than, say, a pickup game of basketball or a casual game of chess between two friends. One of the things that distinguishes a sport from the general use of game is that in the sport there are usually officials and records-keepers. So while no one knows how many games of Chess have been played in the last 100 years there are records of all the sporting competitions held for Chess players.

Some people might argue that an intellectual or strategy game like Chess does not fall into the venue of "sports"; that is, they would say that sports involve not only games but also physical activity (beyond sitting and moving pieces on a board). The physical activity may involve hybrid skills (such as aiming arrows fired from bows) but it could be argued that all games require both physical activity (at a minimal level) and intellectual activity.

It may be better to say that a competitive game qualifies as a sport if the entire body of the competitor is used to compete in the game. Hence, in archery the athlete's stance and physical control over bow and arrow are critical, whereas in Chess or Go it doesn't matter much how you sit (or stand) while you play the game.

If we accept that approximate distinction between sports and other forms of competitive gaming then we can say that sports are more physically demanding and require physical training to improve performance.

Both sports and non-sporting games call for some mix of chance (such as rolling dice, or throwing a ball toward another player) and skill (catching a ball, knowing when to make a certain move). Furthermore, all games allow players to employ different types of strategies in order to improve their scores or performance. Even in a physical contact sport like Boxing or Judo the athletes use strategies that match the size, strength, and skill of their opponents.

Sports may be more likely to attract or inspire a secondary layer of gaming: wagering or betting. Although bets may be taken on the outcome of a game of Chess or Bridge, organized betting is concentrated around the most popular sporting events. Gambling on the outcome of games has become almost a science of its own as bookmakers (third-parties who administer the wagers) and bettors alike may devote considerable effort to studying the experience and statistical records of athletes, teams, and coaches in order to make the best possible predictions about who will win a given competition.

Wagering itself is not so much a sport as a game since there is no full-body physical activity as described above, but some prefessional gamblers may be as dedicated to their lifestyles as the athletes are to their sporting lifestyles.

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