There are currently 2388 games (counting demos, DLCs and such) on Gog. Of those, only 35 are in the Sports filter, not even a full page. To compare, RPG has 8 pages, Simulator and Adventures have 4 pages (those are the ones with the least pages), Action has 12... And well, every genre seems to be way more represented than sports - to a point that the Racing filter lists the same games in Sports, including the soccer games and such.

Of the 35 games, they're divided like this:
23 racers
3 soccer games
2 arcadey skating games (OlliOlli and its sequel)
2 action/racer (Race the Sun, and its DLC Sunrise)
1 racing/action-adventure game (Driver: Parallel Lines)
1 baseball game (arcade port)
1 fantasy sport (Speedball 2)
1 golf game (arcade port)
1 strange game (Vangers)

I can hardly count Driver, Race The Sun/Sunrise or Vangers as 'sports' at all, and I bet many others feel similar, even if not agreeing completely. That would leave only 31 games, and still two thirds are racers. Only *one* golf game, a tad sad since I always liked golf sims. No minigolf games, and those are fun even without the 'sim' factor. Worse, no pool/billiards games at all.

Strange because there have always been plenty of sport games, with popular franchises since the 80's throughout now. And while I understand Gog might not be able to put their hands on the most juicy series out there, there's still a lot to choose from. Maybe they're not represented well enough in the wishlist, who knows.

I am not a fan of sports games, with pool and golf being an exception, but I find this imbalance interesting at least. Enough to make me write this post. I hope Gog solves the 'sports deficiency' for everyone's pleasure and entertaiment (pedantic mode on: the word sport comes from french words meaning pleasure and entertainment).

What are your thoughts on this? Have you added some sport games to the wishlist, or voted them?

Sports are hard because of licencing hell.

Go on, try to list good sports games without some likeness, music, or league attached to it.

Edit: I just remembered, someone was trying to get some boring tennis sim on GOG recently. (Seen here) I then noticed this same person asking a similar question. (Seen here.)

Probably the licensing thing most of all. Also, sports games tend to be seen as outdated as technology improves, at least if you're into realism.

It would be interesting to maybe see stuff like the old TV Sports and Front Page Sports games here, and some goofy games like Grave Yardage or Brutal Football. I've already voted on getting Fire Pro Wrestling World here but with Steam Workshop being such an important part of the game, it might be a bit much for GOG to set up something like that with Galaxy.

I'm not a big fan of sports games, so take everything I'm going to say with a grain of salt, but I have two thoughts on the matter, adding to the license issue.

The first is that - at least among the regulars of this former "good old games" forum - the preferences seem to lie elsewhere. Whenever there was a thread about people's favorites and least favorite genres, I remember seeing a lot of RPG and strategy and such among the favorites, but hardly ever sports, which was pretty common among the least favorite genres though. GOG might be under the same impression as I am - that its target audience doesn't have such a great interest in old sports games as they have in old RPGs, strategy games etc. (It's possible that this is a general trend in PC gamers, and sport games are more popular on consoles? Just a hunch though, I have no data to back it up.)

The second thought is that I'd also think sports games are worse in standing the test of time. AFAIK they often have a new version coming out every year or so, in which the major changes are the player names, and then some minor gameplay tweaks but nothing all that big and innovative, so usually I'd expect the more recent ones to just be a slightly different (possibly better) version than its predecessors. E.g. Fifa 95, 96, 97, 98 etc. - would they all still be attractive to buy for a bigger audience in 2018? Are they all classics? If not, which one is and why? That's just my personal prejudice, of course. Would be interesting to hear your opinion on that.

Fifa '97 because it's the one I played back in the day and it was awesome and I still listen to the soundtrack!

but of course your points are pretty accurate (:

OPENING DAY over here and there is a GREAT GREAT baseball game over at Steam called "Super Mega Baseball".

It doesn't use any real teams or players so I can only assume it's not here because the publisher is an asshole.

Tennis Elbow 2013 sounds like a great tennis game if you're into those. Doesn't look like it uses any licensed material

This comes up once a week. Sports games are licence he'll, and you wouldn't make any money. Go to any charity shop, they can't even give away last years sports games.