Sport Trivia Questions

Sport questions on Twivial are about how games are played rather than who is winning them right now. You'll get rules, scoring systems, team sizes, terms (birdie, deuce, hat trick), surfaces and venues, and a few historic firsts such as the first modern Olympics in 1896.

Why no records

Records are the most popular kind of sports trivia and the worst kind for a question bank, because they get broken. A question about the fastest 100 meters or the most Grand Slam titles is right on the day it is written and wrong some time later. We leave those to quiz nights that write fresh questions each week.

Numbers worth knowing

Team sizes come up often. Soccer and cricket have 11 per side, rugby union 15, rugby league 13, baseball 9 on defense, indoor volleyball 6 and basketball 5. Scoring is the other big group: a touchdown is 6 points, a field goal 3, a basketball shot from beyond the arc 3, and the top score with one dart is 60, from the treble 20.

How to get better at it

If you only follow one or two sports, the vocabulary questions are the easiest way in. Golf's birdie, eagle and bogey, tennis's love and deuce, bowling's strike and spare, and cricket's over and wicket cover a big share of the category. Surfaces are another quick win: Wimbledon is grass and the French Open is clay.

Five sample sport questions

What is the official distance of a marathon?

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42.195 km. That is 26.2 miles, the distance run at the 1908 London Olympics and made standard in 1921

What is the standard maximum break in snooker?

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147. Fifteen reds each followed by a black, then all six colors

Which country won the first FIFA World Cup in 1930?

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Uruguay. Uruguay hosted the tournament and beat Argentina 4–2 in the final

In tennis, what is a score of 40–40 called?

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Deuce. A player then needs two points in a row to win the game

How many players per side are on the field in rugby union?

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15. Rugby league uses 13, which is the usual distractor