The book is devoted to the phenomenon of passion for sports at the beginning of the 20th century and the process of becoming sports as a popular form of leisure in the capital cities of the Russian Empire - St. Petersburg and Moscow. Based on the information of a wide range of sources, the mechanism of functioning of sports organizations is analyzed as one of the ways to organize sports activities in a "big" city, the socio-cultural component and the nature of interaction within such societies are presented, the factors that influenced this are identified.