Basque pelota Cesta Punta professional players in France and Spain. In the United States pelota is mainly a professional sport, strongly tied to betting and the pari-mutuel system. In professional environment is common to play special plays called "quinielas" well adapted to the betting needs. In 1994, the production company Asegarce started painting the courts green so that the ball would be more visible on TV. Professional games are open to betting on the results, as usual in most traditional Basque competitions. In the USA and Macau it is mainly this aspect of the competition that has given it some popularity. Besides
Sport in Croatia to some extent table tennis and chess. Various amateur sport games are popular in Croatia, notably picigin. Franjo Bučar (1866–1946) is widely considered to be the father of modern Croatian sport. He founded the Croatian Sports Federation in 1909 within what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Bučar introduced a multitude of mainstream sports in Croatia, such as football, alpine skiing, ice skating and ice hockey, as well as gymnastics and fencing. The Franjo Bučar State Award for Sport, the Republic of Croatia's highest award in the development of sport, is named in his honor. With the exception of the years