Today, sports is one of the subjects that are mentioned in different titles in the world and many people deal with it in different ways. Some people are professional athletes and some are amateurs, some are fans and interested in sports and watching sports programs, competitions, and shows, and some earn their income through sports.
Many sports ministries and departments have been established and a lot of expenses are spent on sports, building stadiums, complexes, and sports clubs, as well as providing sports equipment and clothes or watching sports competitions. Significant parts of television programs, radio, magazines, and other mass media are dedicated to sports and sports news, and in short, sports is one of the things that is seriously discussed in the world and in many aspects is important.
Historians consider the origin of sports from Greece, which were done for body agility and improving strength, and rowing, boxing, wrestling, swimming, fencing, shooting, skiing, baseball, softball, basketball, and all kinds of football and polo, volleyball, golf, all kinds of tennis, weight throwing, etc. are considered sports.
But regarding the history of sports in Iran, it should be said that among the countries of the East, Iran has undoubtedly been the only country that gave the highest priority to sports and physical education in its education system, and while the Chinese didn’t pay much attention to sports, and Indians sometimes considered physical training and physical activities to be reprehensible, Iranians have realized the importance and value of the ability and health of the body as a very important means to provide a brave and victorious army.
The word sport, which has long been used to mean exercise, officially entered the dictionary of Iranian government words in the modern sense when the “Law on Compulsory Sports in Schools” was passed on 8 September 1927.
If we search in history, we’ll find out that Iranians were the first people who used sportswear. Polo was an ancient and favorite sport of Iranians. Polo players wore a kind of half-sleeve shirt with tight pants to be comfortable while playing. They had chosen the material of the polo shirt in a way to make them sweat less. During the years of colonialism in India, the British got to know Polo and half-sleeve clothes and took them with them to Europe, which later made their way to America and became today’s t-shirts.
According to the characteristics of each sport, there are special clothes that the relevant organizations and federations in the world have considered fixed standards for the general model and its material. In general, sports clothes should be comfortable, functional, washable, and have good ventilation. From the three markets of private orders, machinery products, and mass production, the sportswear production market is mostly placed in the two groups of machinery products, and mass production. The sportswear industry is one of the largest and most profitable apparel industries.
In the meantime, popular sports such as football have gained a larger share of this market.
Football is one of the most profitable sports in the world. 30 football players are on the list of 100 highest-paid athletes in the world. Manchester United football club is the richest club in the world with a value of 2.24 billion dollars. Also, two Spanish clubs, Real Madrid and Barcelona, are the second and third richest football clubs in the world with values equal to 1.87 and 1.30 billion dollars. With a turnover of more than 420 million euros in the 2011-2012 season, Real Madrid won the title of the richest club in the world in terms of turnover for the eighth year in a row.
Sponsors always present in football and generate income for themselves through football fans. Football sponsors, as their name suggests, provide financial support to the team when it has financial problems, and the team in turn advertises their products. Adidas company is one of the pioneers of sponsorship in football, which merchandises in this way. This company exposes its designs or logos on the teams’ shirts and so increases its profits. Of course, the team also benefits a lot this way. Both the players and the heads of the clubs earn a lot of income from cooperation with sponsors.
In addition to these, sports and sports competitions are a very suitable platform for promoting the policies and wishes of governments.
Among this market, the share of major competitions such as the Olympics and the World Championships is very high because the clothes as the flags of the countries, are a symbol of those countries.
In Iran, a large number of sports, both modern and traditional, are active and have their athletes. For example, Tehran was the first city in the Middle East where the Asian Sports Games were held.
The sports budget in Iran in 2010 was 80 million dollars.
Surprisingly, the people involved in the sports of our great country consider a small share of this infinite sea to be their right and do not make an effort to have integrity, to the extent that sometimes it seems that national teams’ uniforms are left behind and forgotten in the winding roads of administrative bureaucracies and financial interests and personal policies.
Although it was expected that with the establishment of the Ministry of Sports in December 2010, due to the new legal possibilities and solutions, order would be given to this chaotic situation, but still, nobody seems to do the right thing. Women’s football and other women’s teams are looking for a solution to the problem of clothes suitable for Islamic beliefs, or the national judo team is unable to afford the necessary funds to buy uniforms for the 7th Asian Deaf Games. Either the head coach of the football teams is unhappy with the prepared uniforms and does not want to use them, or there are many arguments about the national team uniforms in the FIFA World Cup Brazil and…
Our people and athletes are still looking to buy foreign brands…
I suggest that our sports authorities gather a group of clothing design and production specialists to analyze the clothing of different sports fields and give order to this chaotic market by forming a stable organization in three stages.
In the first stage, the designers by choosing the colors and symbols of the clothes, with full attention to the defined international standards and all the cultural, religious, and aesthetic criteria, prepare the appropriate designs of this homeland and this nation and define rules as a standard for the next changes so that if another group takes over the organization, the same policies and ideas will be followed so that everything won’t be in disorder again.
In the second stage, complete research of the existing types of fabrics and the world’s current technologies in the production of fabrics suitable for different climatic sports clothes should be considered. To produce different clothes by choosing the right fabric with full attention to the defined international standards, some restrictions on the use of fabric should be approved.
In the final stage, by fully considering the details of preparing clothes, some rules should be approved for the comfort and practicality of the clothes for each sports field separately.
Maybe in this way, we can produce clothes suitable for our country’s athletes, or if the production is entrusted to another place other than domestic producers, we can be sure of the result.