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¿Te gusta el baloncesto o el fútbol?

¿Te gusta el baloncesto o el fútbol?
Do you like basketball or football?
From Lesson 51:Plural agreement with verbs of liking (gustan)·Spanish (Spain)

Questions & Answers about ¿Te gusta el baloncesto o el fútbol?

Why is it gusta and not gustan if there are two sports?
Because the sports are connected by o (or), they are treated as separate, singular choices. The sentence is essentially asking 'is basketball pleasing to you, or is football pleasing to you?' If you connected them with y (and) to ask if they like both together, you would use the plural gustan.
Why is the word el used before both sports?
In Spanish, when you talk about concepts, sports, or things in a general sense, you must use a definite article like el or la. While we say 'I like basketball' in English, Spanish requires 'I like the basketball' (Me gusta el baloncesto).
Why use Te instead of Tú for 'you'?
Verbs like gustar work backwards compared to English. Literally, this sentence asks 'Is basketball pleasing to you?' The word Te is an indirect object pronoun meaning 'to you', while Tú is a subject pronoun meaning 'you'.
What sport does fútbol refer to here?
In Spain and most of the Spanish-speaking world, el fútbol refers to soccer. If you want to talk about American football, you need to call it el fútbol americano.

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