A sport film is basically a film genre which makes use of sport as the main theme of the movie. It’s a fictional production in which an athlete, sports event, fan of sport, or a topic of popular sport are heavily involved, and which rely strongly on sport for their theme resolution or motivation. It may involve any one or more sports, but the focus tends to be on one sport at a time. It’s often called a sports movie, though it can also be called a Hollywood film, especially if it was made by a renowned Hollywood director.
There are a lot of famous examples of such movies, which you may have already seen. The Mask, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Stagecoach are just a few examples. They’re all about people who have or had a physical prowess in some way, but with the help of modern technology and the increasing interest in science and technology, people are now able to harness this physical prowess for things like video games, computer games, etc. which means that now, it’s not unusual anymore for a game tester to become a professional NASCAR driver, for example, because they were able to demonstrate the gaming ability of the game using a car simulator.
Sport as a theme for a fictional film has really grown in recent years. It used to be a mostly an athletic pastime with no other genres represented. Nowadays it can take several forms, with the sports of baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis, etc. existing side by side with the entertainment sector, creating massive opportunities for Hollywood writers and producers to find something of both genres to work into a script. This kind of cross-media approach has been seen before with the success of independent films like Seabiscuit, which was based on a story about a disabled seahorse who was able to surf and perform to his fullest extent thanks to the physical prowess he had developed as a child. This is also the same trend that is happening with TV shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, where sports abilities from athletes like BMX bike stuntman Steve Pede and WWE wrestlers Rob Van Dam and Randy Couture are used as plotlines, turning the athletic side of things into a comedic focus of the show.