Basque pelota for betting, during the 80's and 90's Jai-Alai was especially popular in Miami and Florida where the frontons had press boxes, restaurants, and going to the Jai-Alai was seen to be a privilege. Men often came in suits and women came in elaborate dresses for the "special event". Nowadays Jai-Alai has dropped in popularity instead of thousands of people who came to watch now there are barely a couple hundred. Pelota is usually played in the Basque regions of south-western France and north-eastern Spain, where it originates. There are also federations of Basque ball in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Costa
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