replace last part of a string in pandas column code example

Example 1: pandas replace word begins with contains

df.sport = df.sport.apply(lambda x: 'ball sport' if 'ball' in x else x)

Example 2: pandas replace word begins with contains

df.sport.str.replace(r'(^.*ball.*$)', 'ball sport')

0        tennis
1    ball sport
2    ball sport
Name: sport, dtype: object