Abstract: This study systematically investigates the historical evolution and knowledge graph of global sports space research through literature analysis and visualization techniques. It further examines the distinctive positioning of Chinese scholarship within the global research landscape and discusses its localized research pathways while proposing outlook on future trends. Key findings reveal four evolutionary epochs in global sports space studies: civilizational incubation, paradigmatic rupture, multiparadigmatic expansion, and techno-human symbiosis. This trajectory demonstrates a tripartite theoretical turn from place-based consciousness through embodied spatiality to agentic spatialization. The Chinese scholarship demonstrates a dynamic co-evolution where practical wisdom and critical global theories reciprocally reconstitute research ecosystems across thematic foci, theoretical systems, and methodological paradigms, cultivating an emergent intercivilizational epistemology. Prospects for future research include: First, deepening exploration of social inclusion mechanisms and the ongoing digital technological turn. Second, deconstructing traditional academic divisions to enable decentralized global knowledge production. Third, promoting the dialectical unity of positivist and interpretivist paradigms and advancing critical ethnography. An inter-civilizational perspective can facilitate discursive reconstruction and the development of a more diverse knowledge production system for sports space research.