Many discussions on rules of thumb start with, "This league/championship is important," or "This sport is popular in country X." While these arguments provide indirect evidence, a much better way to reach an agreement is to double-check if everyone meeting the proposed criteria has appropriate sources meeting the general notability guideline. For example, for an individual championship, you can list everyone who has won the championship and, for each person, the corresponding sources that show they meet Wikipedia's standards for inclusion.
This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia. The article should provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline.
If the article meets the criteria set forth below, then it is likely that sufficient sources exist to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. Failing to meet the criteria in this guideline means that notability will need to be established in other ways (for example, the general notability guideline, or other, topic-specific, notability guidelines).
Please note that the failure to meet these criteria does not mean an article must be deleted; conversely, meeting any of these criteria does not mean that an article must be kept. These are merely rules of thumb which some editors choose to keep in mind when deciding whether or not to keep an article that is on articles for deletion, along with relevant policies and guidelines such as Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources.
All information included in Wikipedia, including articles about sports, must be verifiable. In addition, the subjects of standalone articles should meet the general notability guideline. The guideline on this page provides bright-line guidance to enable editors to determine quickly if a subject is likely to meet the general notability guideline. Information about living persons must meet the more stringent requirements for those types of articles.
Subjects that do not meet the sport-specific criteria outlined in this guideline may still be notable if they meet the general notability guideline or another subject specific notability guideline.