There exist competitive board games (e.g. Chess, Scrabble, Battleship) and cooperative board games (e.g. Pandemic, Hanabi). It appears to me as all popular sports are competitive in nature (competition among individuals or among teams).
Are there sports that are uniquely cooperative?
Are there very popular cooperative sports today?
Were cooperative sports more popular at some point in our history?
I can think of several examples where a team accomplished a goal of sport that was not exclusively against an opponent.
Highest trampoline bounce (team) - You could argue they are competing against the previous record holders, but I'd argue they are competing against gravity.
The ones mentioned earlier, but any action sport where teams work together to accomplish a goal - Think endurance sports, group activities that conquer nature, or other team building exercises like Ropes Courses.
Because this is not an established category of sport, it's hard to say that one time period showed more popularity - we can probably say that these types of activities where there is no competition require both time and money - as such these activities were probably limited to the ultra-rich in the past or those that funded such feats. Today people have considerably more leisure time. According to The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, "Americans appear to be working less. Numerous economic studies suggest that the number of hours that the average American works in a year has fallen by about 550 hours from 1900 to 2005." This suggests that modern people have more time to partake in such activities.
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