Are they both correct : a sports event or a

Are they both correct : a sports event or a sporting event?
I found example from Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary that shows a sporting event.

They are both correct, but I would tend to use “a sports event”

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Yes, they are synonymous, but ironically I tend to say “sporting event.”

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I also say ‘sports event’. Maybe we have found another Canadian vs American difference?

Could be, but with two such large countries, I would surmise that there are regional differences within each country as well as other factors.

For example in the US, the woodlouse is generally known in the South as a ‘potato bug’ whereas in the Upper Midwest it is generally known as a ‘roly-poly,’ and yet if you said ‘woodlouse’ many people wouldn’t be able to tell you what a woodlouse is. Which I think is the definition of dialect.

But even within the same family, one person might call it a ‘sports event’ and another a ‘sporting event,’ which could be an indicator of age differences or some other influencing factor, such as exposure to language in media, but is not necessarily dialect. I think the term for this would be ‘preference.’

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They are both OK as others have said. Americans in general use the plural (e.g. “I like sports”), whereas other speakers use the singular (e.g. “I like sport”). I think your phrases follow on from this: those who say “sports” are more likely to say “sports event” and those who say “sport” are more likely to say “sporting event”. As an Australian, I prefer “sporting event”, but my American wife says “sports event”.

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Yes, both are correct. Both are interchangeable.