In sports, a score is a quantitative measure of the relative performance of competitors in a sport. Most sports with a score use it to determine a winner and have rules that define how points can be awarded or deducted. Different sports have very diverse scoring systems, making it difficult to compare scores across athletic disciplines.

Most team sports award points by putting the ball in the opposing team’s net, or by scoring other goals. A team’s total score is the sum of all goal scores it makes in a game, and the winning team is that which has the higher score. A draw or tie is a result where the teams have an equal total score, often requiring a tiebreaker.

The word “score” can also be used as a verb, meaning to achieve a good result in a competition or game, or to record the results of a sporting event. For example, you might say that someone “scored a touchdown” in football or that “the cricketers scored a century.” It can also mean to get drugs, particularly illegal ones, and this sense of the word is often used by professional athletes.

This article looks at the highest scores in a range of sports, and how they are achieved. The most common way of scoring is by adding up the number of goals or runs scored, but some sports have more complicated scoring procedures. For example, biathlon is a sport that uses a duration to which are added penalty times based on the events in the competition.