Sports and Arts

So a wise woman of my acquaintance postulates the sports and arts have a similarly beneficial effect on your community.

If sports teams provide the same kind of benefit, do they provide them in the same way?

It's good to have an arts scene. It encourages artistic endeavour in community members, it encourages people from afar to come to your community to participate in the arts world, and it challenges, in extreme cases, the community to express itself against repression or intolerance.. Ok, let's do a google for "athletes call for..."
Alright, sports passed that test...

Ok, so it's also good to go and experience the arts. I suspect it exposes you to other cultures, it's likely good for your brain, it probably offsets any number of mental diseases. It lowers blood pressure, it engages passion, etc. Any benefits to being a sports spectator? Well I'll be damned. Also "No results found for "watching sports makes you dumber""

Ok, this next one is a gimme. Supporting culture helps cause all the things above, I'm not even going to bother to google whether supporting sports does the same. So I'll just put this here:

(I'd give him $70)


I'm still not 100% sold. Why do sports not have the same reputation as arts, then? Maybe it's because the 'stereotypical' sports fan does not exemplify the benefits above.
We expect to see the fan on the left, instead of the fans on the right.

Ok, I have to wrap this one u

In summary, sports and arts are equally good for you if you let them be. It's easier with arts because we value the benefits, and recognize them, and celebrate them as the primary reason for the thing. In sports, if we value the benefits above more than we value winning, then we see the benefits, and reap them.

I do not say we have to do away with competition, because I believe that competition is heart and soul to sport (this is not fitness, this is sport!)

Now, for a moment, I was terrified that I had talked myself into supporting the public funding of the downtown arena, but I think I have solved that one too. The downtown arena would be privately owned, and thus not erected for the promotion of the benefits above. So I would support a publicly owned arena. Following up from that, I believe we have a good community-owned arena now, owned by "a non-profit, volunteer organization... founded in 1879, before the official incorporation of the city."

What did I miss?