Brave New Sport - Empowering 21st Century Society

BRAVE NEW  SPORT

Empowering 21st Century Society

Raphael von Thiessen Simone Achermann Peter Firth Stephan Sigrist

lllustrations by

Andrew Archer

Contributors

Philippe Blatter Christian Müller Jörg Polzer

BRAVE   NEW  SPORT

Empowering 21st Century Society

W.I.R.E. Think Tank for Business, Science and Society In collaboration with Infront

PREFACE

SPORT

has always played a major role in the lives of hundreds of millions around the world. The importance of playful competition has long been integral to our culture, with its origins tracing back to ancient civilization. However, by the 21st century, sport has ultimately transmuted into an essential social function, becoming a catalyst for technological advances, economic growth, healthier lifestyles, and geopolitical reputation.

While the COVID-19 pandemic may have expedited certain technological developments in sport, its function as a sweeping social phenomenon that impacts many aspects of our daily life has be en growing for several decades. Seismic shifts are resulting in new challenges and opportunities for stakeholders. This has been evident in the rise of media consumption and fan engagement through social media, and has been complemented by technology that allows athletes and teams to compete at unprecedented levels of prowess. In addition, the rise of new sports and the decline of traditional ones along with the growth spike in mass participation events are creating areas of exploitation. Data analytics, science, and innovation are also pushing the boundaries further. The highly dynamic and competitive nature of sport in today’s world, the financial and reputational elements at stake, as well as changing consumer ne e ds and habits are also creating new sports and formats, making the analysis of long-term trends increasingly vital.

We at Infront are in a privileged position, as we can witness this happening on a daily basis. Decades of experience and understanding of a rapidly changing industry give us the insight to surmise what comes next. To Infront, sport is so much more than a business. It is our purpose, our passion, and what drives us. Our aim has always been and always will be to unite people in sport and enable them to live their passions and dreams.

The pandemic has further stimulated our aspiration to shape the future of sports as a leading player in the field. It was with this in mind that we initiated an intense collaboration with W.I.R.E., one of the leading futurist think tanks, to research and co-create Brave New Sport.

This publication which includes insight from various expert interviews and research resources aims to foster a dialogue about where sport is heading as societal behavior continues to evolve. It is designed to go beyond data and numbers, offering a more qualitative approach for stakeholders and highlighting the potential impact on all le vels of society both micro and macro. It also includes a deep dive into some truly bold scenarios that could be played out if the pre dictions for the global sports ecosystem become reality.

These bold scenarios are the playground in which we can experiment and launch a compelling conversation about how brave we want to be both as an industry and a societal function and whether this is where we want sport to go. The long-term future is open to much speculation and we seek to engage the most visionary individuals in a stimulating discussion where there are no right or wrong answers. With that in mind, we look forward to hearing the views of our peers on what they think the next few decades in sport could look like.

When Aldous Huxley released his ground-breaking book Brave New World in 1932, it depicted a dystopian future where emotion and individuality are conditioned out of people at a young age. While the title of this book is a nod towards this famous work of literature, the key difference is that we highlight the positive and transformative potential of sport for society. Are we heading towards a brave new world of sport? As Huxley himself writes in his book: “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” Is sport conditioned and set up to be a leader or a follower?

Eyes open, it is going to be an exciting journey. We are looking forward to it.

Philippe Blatter President & CEO Infront Group

Christian Müller CEO Infront X

Jörg Polzer VP Strategic Communications

Infront G roup

The Meanings and Functions of Sport

Bold Scenarios and Predictions Guidelines for Business, Politics, and Society Introduction

The Future Sports Environment

Towards a New World of Sport

Sports are not invented overnight. In the great plethora of games watched and played in the 2020s from soccer and baseball, to boxing and polo almost all are the result of generations of development, experimentation, and arguing over the rules. But what if humans have run out of track when it comes to designing their own sports? It is possible. True to form, scientists turn to their tools to provide an answer to this conundrum. Technologists use artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate decades of game design to arrive at a new fully-formed sport. Absorbing the rules of some 400 different sport forms, the system configures a new team sport that encompasses the most compelling elements of team human athleticism.

While this might sound like the stuff of sci-fi, it already happened in 2019. While some of the algorithm’s suggestions were on the eccentric side in one instance, the system proposed a game of volleyball in a tiny room with participants attached to the floor it eventually alighted on a dynamic, enthralling new sport: Speedgate.1

A soccer/rugby hybrid involving the kicking of a ball through three gates, the sport is played in teams and prioritizes notions of honesty and fair play. For instance, the AI affirmed that if a team claims to have scored and is found to be incorrect, a point is awarded to the opposite side. The appearance of experiments like Speedgate illustrate that the sports sphere is at a great moment of transformation. New technologies and approaches are aligning to challenge the accepted notions of how sport is exercised, played, viewed and monetized.

Towards a New Age of Sport

In a sector as far-reaching as sport, it is impossible to ignore the impact of globalization, and specifically, of the emergence of the Asian Century the economic and cultural rise of APAC countries, with a particular emphasis on China. These markets are becoming the vital new frontiers for the commercialization of sport and the new instigators for how games are played. According to figures from the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, in recent years the sports sector has been growing at a faster rate than the wider economy.2 Rep orts like these illustrate a boom of investment and policy attention from Beijing.

A key transformational driver which is highly pronounced in (but not limited to) Asia in recent years is the rise of virtualization in sports, or more prosaically, esports. This mass phenomena is challenging our very notion of what sport is. In 2021, computer games as a watchable spectacle is proving to be a major growth industry for the rest of the decade and beyond: esports had a 435 million strong audience in 2020, and by 2024 viewership is anticipated to grow beyond 577 million.3 This jump accelerated, no doubt, by lockdown measures introduced during the COVID-19 year.

Linked to this digitization is the rise of data analytics in sports. While the story of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, which used sabermetrics to turn an underfunded team into a competitive force and which was made famous by the book and film Moneyball, the potential of such tactics is only beginning to be understood. In basketball, Israeli start-up RSPCT is helping National Basketball Association (NBA) teams get a better understanding of athletes’ performance with an Intel RealSense 3D depth camera that tracks the trajectory of every shot.4 The system is combined with a wristband that tracks player movement. It is not just a case of more technology deployed in sport. The wider social, cultural, and moral meanings associated with it are changing too. For example, athletes are now more politicized than before, and are increasingly positioned by clubs, brands and managers as role models. In the age of social medi a , athletes can also promote themselves via digital communication platforms and reach large audiences directly to raise awareness for social causes. Sp or ts personalities are abandoning the “shut up and play” position encouraged by major associations in years past and uniting for specific causes. In 2020, players from basketball, soccer, and tennis in the US opted out of games following the killing of Jacob Blake at the hands of police in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Meanwhile, the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic has given global society a ta ste of what it is like to experience a single existential threat. Now more thought is being given to the resilience of sport in the face of climate change and potential future pandemics, and there have been calls to scale back colossal events like the Olympic Games.

Beyond Competition and Playfulness

Examining the long and varied history of sport, it is clear that participation in it serves an array of functions, representative of the diversity of human experience. The playing and watching of sport is deeply entwined with day-to-day life, so ciety and culture. Anthropologists have long asserted that sport serves a distinct human desire for competition and playfulness: as confirmed by paintings depicting wrestling matches and sprinting found in the French Lascaux caves etched about 15,300 years ago.5

Sp ort has provided the stage on which humanity explores the upper limits of its speed, strength, endurance as well as technical and strategic potential. Throughout history, sport has enabled those with focus and drive to set new agendas and records. The upwards trend of performance in athletics, team sports, and elsewhere is due to improvements in technology, equipment, training, nutrition, and selection. Consider the phenomenon of the four-minute mile: British athlete Roger Bannister was the first recorded human to do the then-

unthinkable feat in 1954. But improvements in footwear, running tracks, nutrition, and preparation mean that as of today, some 1,500 people have equaled Bannister’s record.6

Sport has also provided a forum for the expansion of ideas. Its contributions to political causes today are well documented, but playing sports can also promote social cohesion and connections between people from different social and ethnic backgrounds.

The knowledge that sport is beneficial to health stretches back to ancient Chinese dynasties. Notably, there is evidence to suggest that Kung Fu began as an exercise routine for Shaolin Buddhist monks there.7 Today, governments around the world are coming around to the idea of sports participation as a means of mitigating the effect of lifestyle diseases in an achievable and low-cost way. Sport has always served as a means of creating a sense of belonging for people. This is proven by the appearance of new sports teams in rapidly industrializing Europe in the 19th century. Manchester United, Borussia Dortmund, FC B arcelona and Juventus began as small clubs of working class immigrants who found themselves in new urban melting pots. Sport was a means of forging connections with fellow citizens in unfamiliar and hitherto unknowable communities.

The Brave New Side of Sport

The world is on the cusp of cataclysmic change. The forces on the brink of re-shaping our world are many: from climate change and economic polarization to technological disruption. But in this strange new world, sport remains one constant. In fact, sport is an enabling force capable of spreading social innovations in the 21st century. Sport is inextricably linked to education and academic attainment. It encourages team thinking and (at times) humility. The more pessimistic might affirm that sport is a means of distracting the masses, diverting attention away from political scandals, poor quality of life or a lack of opportunity. As with any mightily complex scenario, both standpoints have credence. But negative attention on issues such as athletes’ exorbitant wages or political posturing around major events risks squandering the opportunities of the brave new side of sport. To use sport as a means of elevating society, we must be more conscious of its power.

There are some clear indicators of sport’s enhancing potential. Consider how Formula E is growing in popularity, increasing the profile, and affirming the desirability of electrically-powered vehicles. Or take the example of advances in precision medicine and human enhancement. Doping in sport continues to b e a p ervasive issue. But bold leaps forward in precision medicine, nutrition, and exercise methods are also being used in the sphere of competition. Further along the line, mind-enhancing drugs called nootropics could be used along with many other human enhancements. These will instigate a cultural shift, making such practices more widespread in many circles. However, the technological shifts also change the very notion of sport itself. The debate around sentient machines and AI will be argued in the sphere of sport. As machines become complicit in the competition process and even become competitors themselves, it will change how smart systems are accepted, admired, and appre-

ciated. It will also usher in debates on how accountable humans become for algorithmic decisions taken by autonomous machines. Lastly, diversity and inclusion will also gain momentum with new moral codes that are drawn up by te ams , federations, leagues, and brands. They will also be demanded by the public. In addition, sport has been the arena in which people have rallied to social causes. Gender inequality, racism, and environmental causes have all played out here. This also holds for education. The commonalities between sport and education emerge from games and physical education classes in schools, but there is more potential still for sport to intersect with education. Sport might be used as a means of facilitating social mobility, providing people with access to skills and information.

Broadly speaking, sport is likely to break free of its confines elite leagues, schools and individual participation to per meate more areas of public life. This means more facilities built into infrastructure, with urbanists designing sport-oriented cities.

Between Hype and Hope

The brave new potential of sport however, is far from assured. With each opportunity comes an obstacle, and it is vital for stakeholders in the sports industry to think critically in order to negotiate the future. Meanwhile, many breakthroughs anticipated to revolutionize how we play, watch and create sport have simply not yet come to fruition. Virtual reality (VR) is one example. While technologists zealously extolled the benefits of VR sport when the technology first emerge d, it is clear that it will be some time before headsets replace screens (or eat into the market share of TVs in any meaningful way). There is also the subject of environmental fair play, a set of rules that obligates all teams or athletes within a league to comply with a set of sustainability goals such as air miles or CO₂ emissions. It is clear that sporting juggernauts must adhere, but rolling out such initiatives has been tricky.

It is hard not to marvel at the potential of competitions that allow human enhancements where athletes who have been subject to the full effect of scientific experiment are permitted to compete in a no-holds-barred contest. But regulations and legal issues (for instance, knotty debates such as genetics) would make such a spectacle unlikely and maybe impossible. Nuances between countries will make such debates more complicated still: there could be marked differences between how an autocratic state and a liberal one might field athletes in such a contest.

As with any great leap forward, there will be moments of hype attached to innovations that land suddenly in the news. High expectations will follow when it comes the potential of inventions to transform society. These must be tempered by reasoned debate, industry guidance, and new means of orientation. Me anwhile, sport itself is beholden to traditional hierarchical structures that might be reluctant to step into any future scenario that means a re-think in practice. Expect a sector backlash where more conservative governing bodies tend to penalize and marginalize innovators and early adopters.

Creating a Desirable Future of Sport

The key question posed by this publication is: how can sport contribute to creating a desirable future? While sport has been on a soaring trajectory of commercialized growth, with big top-tier games like soccer, hockey, basketball, Formula 1 (F1), and cricket assuming dominance, the future might not see more of the same. Already, individuals in business, policy, and economics are determining ways of using sport to spread certain values (ethical, social, and environmental) within society. Sport is also becoming an ever more effective tool for propagating healthy and sustainable lifestyles. The issue for policymakers and those reading this book is how successfully we can integrate sport into the everyday lives of future citizens, as well as how, in a post-pandemic world, we might re-ignite the community element of sport that happens when thousands of people unite for a single purpose or a shared objective. As technology becomes more central to the human experience, how will this trend manifest in the sp or ts arena? To answer this question, W.I.R.E. and Infront interviewed a panel of changemakers and thought leaders from various subsections of the sports sector (see Appendix). The insights gained during this journey were used to draw predictions about the future of sports on various levels such as sports media consumption, the next generation of esports, a power shift towards self-promoting athletes, and tomorrow’s public sports infrastructure. Each prediction is presented with a corresponding bold scenario. While the narratives and illustrations might be concrete, fictional, provocative, and even controversial at times, they will allow the various stakeholders to engage in a discussion ab out what constitutes a desirable future of sport.

Crucially, what this publication will try to discern is: what role will sport play in the society of the future? Within this, we will also examine whether sport reflects society or whether it is sport that is reactively changing how people live in the world. Some of the findings indicate that the role of sport as enabler and pioneer will prevail over the upcoming decades, because sport is one of the la st domains that connects diverse people and allows for the promotion of technological advancements in a playful way. So sport will go beyond mirroring society. Instead, the brave ne w world of sport will shape how individuals and society will live, fail, and thrive in the 21st century.

SOURCES

1 Speedgate (2021): Play Speedgate

2 National Bureau of Statistics of China (2021): Announcement on Total Scale and Value-adde d Data of National Sports Industry in 2019

3 Newzoo (2021): Viewership Engagement Continues to Skyro cket Across Games and Esports: The Global Live Streaming Audience Will Pass 700 Million This Year

4 RealSense (2018): Tracking NBA Shooting Stats with RSPCT Using Intel® RealSense™ Technology

5 Wikiwand (2021): History of Sport

6 CBC (2018): Only 1,497 humans have ever broken the 4-minute mile — and I’m one of them

7 Health & Fitness History (2021): History of Kung Fu

THE MEANINGS AND FUNCTIONS OF SPORT

Understanding Sport

Before envisioning the future of sport, a supposedly simple question needs to be answered. What is sport? There is no definitive answer. Sport can be a competition, a game, a lifestyle, a belief system, and a ritual, and it is closely linked with human understandings of gain and loss. It is also a driver of advancement in technology, science and design, and heavily influences our sense of the aesthetic, while sports personalities are among the most prominent global celebrities.

Sport continues to be a highly complex —  almost unknowable — social construct. The most pragmatic way to lay a groundwork for the arguments in this publication therefore is to begin not with the question “what is sport?”, but instead with “why do we need it?” The following chapter attempts to approach this question through a series of subsections that cover the basic functions of sport.

Today’s perspective will lay the foundation for a systematic outlook on the future of the global sports landscape. Which human needs will be satisfied by sports in the future? How will drivers of change such as digitization, medical progress, and increasing health awareness impact the underlying dynamics? Before investigating these questions, an in-depth understanding of the basic functions of sport is required.

COMPETITION AND PLAYFULNESS

Basketball player Michael Jordan might be one of the most recognizable sporting figures alive today. In 2020, the former Chicago Bulls player still held the record for most points won on average per game. In business, Jordan is equally skillful his sp onsorships and investments have crowned him the wealthiest player in the history of the game. According to some, Jordan owes his success to an unyielding competitiveness that seems to plague him in every facet of his life. He would punch fellow teammates during Bulls’ practice, place impressive wagers on rounds of golf, and even cajole security staff into games of “quarters” for small bets. These anecdotes illustrate a core truth of the human condition.1 We are hardwired to compete against others, against ourselves, and against external, intangible forces (such as time itself). Our careers, family lives, relationships, and personal health are routinely described as a series of battles in

Early forms of soccer were performed as a violent mob activity which satisfied human needs for playful competition.

which we either prevail or fail. We win promotions, fight for love, battle cancer, or beat an addiction. During the course of human history, we have used sport as a means of simulating and reproducing the array of conflicts that threaten our prosperity, lower our place in society or imperil our lives.

The Human Need to Compete

The plethora of sports played globally share a common aspect they represent a formalized template for the actions that have enabled the human race to survive over time. There is mounting evidence that competing (or more specifically, winning) is good for us. In his book The Winner Effect, Ian Robertson observes that winning by increasing the chemical messenger dopamine activates the reward network in the brain, which makes us feel good.2 Our brain senses victory and rewards us in the same way as when we rest, eat, and have sex. As well, society honors winners with higher recognition value, status and prestige. Some studies even claim that winners tend to live longer due to the various rewards they get: Nobel Prize winners and Oscar winners tend to outlive nominees.3

The Pleasure of Playing

But while so much of our existence is understood through binary ideas of winning and losing, intrinsically linked to this impulse to compete is our impulse to play. Playing defined as a repeated, voluntary behavior that carries no practical purpose is observable in all corners of the world and also throughout the animal kingdom. Given its presence in the lives of other mammals, insects, and arachnids, it makes sense to assume that our ancestors were playing long before the first human civilizations were established. Neolithic cave paintings from Mongolia show that play was codified into our species’ first sport wrestling sometime around 7000 BC.4 Clearly, playfulness is as much a component of the human experience as competition. Play can be competitive, just as competition can be playful. German poet Friedrich Schiller observed that “man only plays when he is in the fullest sense of the word a human being, and he is only fully a human being when he plays.”5 More over, play is a performative simulation of our most dire battles.

Sport Throughout History

Examining history, we see how impromptu competition and playfulness gave rise to the notion of sport as we understand it today. Some sp or ts owe their origins to military combat chariot racing, archery, and athletics, while others stemmed from interpersonal rivalry and building of hierarchies fist-fights for ladies’ affections in 19th century England led to the Queensberry boxing rules.⁶ Still

others have a more folkloric origin, such as the different stories about the roots of soccer. According to some sources, soccer emerged as a violent mob activity on public holidays in England.⁷ But without structures and rules ensuring fair competition, these disorganized activities were stunted in their ability to serve the public’s desire for competition and playfulness. This was addressed during the Victorian era when rules were drawn up and federations formed for a variety of sports, such as the Football Association, the Rugby Football Union, and the Lawn Tennis Association. Many emerged in pubs to provide a sense of identity in newly-forming industrial communities (see Chapter 3), but crucially, they enabled competitors to win or lose fairly.

In the following century, humanity discovered new limits to athletic performance, drawing upon the fast-evolving spheres of science and technology. Now athlete nutrition, game strategy, equipment design, surface technologies, and training methods satisfy the ba sic human desire for competition and play in the most efficient way. However, this has ushered in a set of unintended consequences, from doping scandals and corruption charges in elite sports, to athletes suffering from mental illness and injuries. While too much play and comp etition might carry dangers, humanity seems compelled to follow the allegory of human experience that sport represents events, heats, competitions, and tournaments, all of which give viewers an opportunity to better understand their own life narratives and most existential struggles.

SOURCES

1 Business Insider (2021): 28 examples of Michael Jordan's incredible competitiveness

2 Ian Robertson (2013): The Winner Effect: The Science of Success and How to Use It

3 Harvard Health Publishing (2006): Social Status: Longer life exp e ctancy for Oscar winners

4 The Post and Courier (2016): Wrestling ‘in our blood,’ says Bulldogs’ Luvsandorj

5 Friedrich Schiller (1794): Letters Upon The Aesthetic Education of Man

6 Britannica (2021): The Queensberry Rules

7 Soccer History Organisation (2021): Soccer History

HEALTH   AND WELLBEING

In May 2020 researchers at Stanford University published a study ¹ examining the effect of exercise on humans. Scientists put 36 participant s through nine minutes of treadmill running before analyzing blood samples. They discovered that a single burst of exercise alters the chemical balance of 9,815 molecules found in the bloodstream. While the aim of the experiment was to find a way to measure fitness better, it achieved something else instead: it illustrated just how profoundly movement transforms us. This potential to remodel ourselves (whether chemically, physiologically or mentally) through exercise is a key driver of sports participation and is the reason why spor t is so inextricably connected with public health and personal wellbeing.

Benefits of Engaging in Physical Activity

While much of humanity’s time and attention in the 2020s will be spent battling the coronavirus pandemic, the medical community has long warned of another, more insidious health emergency: physical inactivity. The Lancet, a renowned medical journal, has defined this a s a “pandemic, with far-reaching health, economic, environmental, and social consequences”. The World Health Organization (WHO) cites sedentary lifestyles as being the primary cause of breast and colon cancer (21 – 25 p ercent), diabetes (27 percent), and ischemic heart disease (30 percent).² Shockingly, most people now live in countries where obesity kills more than malnutrition.³ So far, these problems have been met globally with government initiatives (such as “fat taxes” and Japan’s “Metabo Law”) and responses from the private sector, rather than grassroots sports programs. A progressive step came in May 2019, when New Zealand announced its ambitious “ Wellbeing Budget” designed to improve quality of life, even though the direct results of the initiative were moderate.⁴ In the private sector, fears surrounding obesity have also caused a boom in the “physical activity economy” a term coined by the Global

Wellness Institute describing paid-for health facilities ranging from health clubs to yoga classes. The institute reckons that in 2019 this sector was worth USD 828.2 billion globally, and that it will reach USD 1.1 trillion by 2023.5

Understanding the Benefits of Physical Activity

Today the connection between sports and health is well established, but this association has fluctuated throughout history. The earliest record of sports promoting health is from Ancient China (circa 2500 BC) when Hua Tuo, a distinguished surgeon, promoted exercises mimicking the movements of animals.6 Then, in Ancient Greece, physical training became part of education, and a “healthy perception of life” emerged in wider society. This appreciation of the link betwe en sport and health was suppressed by the arrival of Christianity during the Dark Ages Greco-Roman sports were abandoned because of their pagan associations, and development of the body was thought sinful in an era when spiritual development surpassed all else.7 The Enlightenment of the 1700s ushered in a rediscovery of health and wellness through sport. Genevan philosopher JeanJacques Rousseau described exercise as being the “most important part of education” for re aring healthy, robust children, and for the inculcation of morals.8

The Unhealthy Side of Sport

While Rousseau may have been a zealot for sport’s positive health and moral impacts, he could not have foreseen the dangers associated with excessive exercise. These are particularly pronounced in the US where, according to the National Safety Council, two million sports injuries annually are attributed to personal exercise, basketball, cycling, and American football alone.9 Meanwhile, our obsession with health and body image poses clear risks to mental wellbeing. Some health experts are warning of a rise in anorexia athletica (also called hypergymnasia), a condition which involves obsessive exercise to maintain abnormally low body weight. In the UK, hospital admissions for eating disorders have risen by over a third in the two years pre ceding 2020, according to figures of the country’s National Health Service (NHS).10

Wellbeing Beyond Physical Health

The interdependence of sport and mental wellness is complex. The above conditions stem from an array of personal neuroses attributed to social pressure and body image, but the positive mental effect of playing sports and exercising in moderation is proven research from Yale and Oxford Universities indicates that these pastimes provide more happiness than money.11 But the marked increase in

SOURCES

1 Stanford Medicine (2020): Stanford Medicine study details molecular effects of exercise

2 World Health Organization (2011): WHO stresses importance of physical activity for cancer prevention

3 The Guardian (2020): Malnutrition leading cause of death and ill health worldwide – report

4 The Guardian (2021): New Zealand’s ‘wellbeing budget’ made headlines, but what really changed?

5 Global Wellness Institute (2018): Wellness Industry Statistics & Facts

6 Chinese Medicine and Culture (2018): Hua Tuo’s Wu Qin Xi (Five Animal Frolics) movements and the logic behind it

7 S.R. Sharma (1994): Encyclopedia of Sports Health and Physical Education

8 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1772): Considerations on the Government of Poland and on its Proposed Reformations

9 National Security Council (2020): Injury Facts

10 NHS (2020): Anorexia in younger children may be increasing

11 The Lancet (2018): Association between physical exercise and mental health

12 Sports Health (2020): Play Sports for a Quieter Brain: Evidence From Division I Collegiate Athletes

mental malaise in society is causing many to take a more considered approach to how sport, movement, and meditation can enhance mental as well as physical fitness. This is observable in a new wave of brain-training gyms such as the London rowing club, Rowbots. Here, trainers share psychologist-sanctioned mental conditioning techniques to help their clients develop resilience and meet physical goals. Sport may also help us to deal better with distraction and information overload. Northwestern University discovered that athletes were better than non-athletes at ignoring background noise on an audio track and identifying sound clues.12 Humankind’s quest for longevity, resilience to disease, desirability, pleasure, and camaraderie are all intrinsically linked to our pursuit of health and wellbeing. The most accessible conduit for these attributes is to be found in sports participation. As the wellness market continues on its trajectory of commercialized growth, sport will be viewed as a low risk approach to health and wellbeing.

Hua Tao, a pioneering surgeon from Ancient China, promoted health through exercises that mimic animal movements.

COMMUNITY AND       IDENTITY

The Old Spotted Dog Stadium in east London is said to be the city’s oldest soccer ground. Accessible via an alleyway by a derelict pub, the ground is home to the Clapton Community Football Club of the Middlesex County League. In 2011, spectators here numbered about twenty, but by 2015, that had risen to over 500. It was not an increase in talent that caused this spike in attendance (the team is nine leagues below the nation’s top flight): what draws the crowds is a recognition of shared values and a sense of community. The club’s fan base defines itself by rallying against racism, fascism, and sexism. It raises money for food banks, donates to local causes, and supports refugees. Such activism has formed a spontaneous community that provides members with a sense of purpose and the means to express their individual identities with sp ort as the linchpin.

Fan crowds, such as supporters of Clapton Community FC, create choreographies to express shared values and a s ens e of community.

Humans as Social Animals

The urge to be part of a community is central to the human experience. While some economists and biologists have propagated the notion that life is advanced by competition and self-interest, this outlook is being challenged by research also promoting the evolutionary importance of cooperation.1 In fact , neurological research shows that cooperating makes us feel good and working w ith others stimulates the same reward areas of the brain as winning money or taking drugs. Meanwhile, the dangers of isolation are becoming ever more substantiated. A lack of social interaction has be en found to lower cognitive function in older people and negatively impact immune systems.2 One study carried out by Brigham Young University warns that loneliness might be a greater threat to health than obesity.3

A Sense of Belonging in a Fragmented Society

Herein lies one of the biggest questions facing global society. At a time when unprecedented migration, urbanization, and digital distraction are contributing to social isolation, how do we build and maintain knowable communities? Evidence suggests that a proportion of the answer lies in sport participation whether playing or watching. The presence of grassroots and amateur teams has demonstrated efficacy in building skills and proficiency in local populations, increasing the feeling of social cohesion, providing a framework for conversation, developing leadership skills, encouraging civic responsibility, and reducing crime.4 These factors are pivotal to the creation of strong ties in society and, where sport is concerned, can be achieved in two ways. The first is through participation in collective physical activity indeed, the recent surge in popularity of group exercise may point to its utility in tackling the looming loneliness epidemic while the se cond is through gathering to support a team or an athlete. Both have the potential to unite sections of so ciety that might otherwise have little to do with each other.

Sport and Identity Formation

Aside from humanity’s predisposition to seek the acceptance of community, a preoccupation with the self is a dominant psycho-social force in individualized Western societies. In all pursuits and areas of interest, we perform our way to an idealized version of ourselves. Sociologist Anthony Giddens explores this in his book, Modernity and Self-Identity, concluding that identity is no longer a given, determined by gender, class, locality or ethnicity.5 Instead, identity must be continually constructed, and maintaining it is a daily task that must be carried out, fought for and reflected upon. Such conditions seemingly give rise to the self being expressed through sport in the form of an athletic identity a means of defining one’s own character

by engaging in sport. Meanwhile, identifying as a fan is also a means of demonstrating who we are, but the picture is nuanced, with some spectators unwilling to accept just how profoundly fandom influences their behavior and personality.

The Dangers of Overidentification

Every form of identity carries a form of demarcation, and in some sports, this boils over into tension, aggression and sometimes violence. Meanwhile, an overdependence on community can lead to tribal or jingoist behavior that reduces individuals’ capacity for independent thought. There is a scientific explanation for this, according to Harvard neuroscientists, who observed that in crowds, the medial prefrontal cortex, responsible in part for self-reflection, is more dormant.6 This makes us more prone to group thought for better or worse and might explain why fans are prone to rioting when their team wins. Spectators join in rowdy physical behavior to engage more fully in the victory of their team: if they can’t throw a fo otball, they can at least throw a bottle or rock. Fervent fandom conceals the danger of overreliance on sport, as seen in the spring of 2020, when the cancellation of live sport left many feeling bereft. Collective rituals such as sport provide a sense of control and social connectedness, and losing them frequently leads to feelings of isolation, alienation, and uncertainty.

But while there might be pitfalls in the above scenarios, sport plays a crucial role in strengthening social ties, and carries the potential to alleviate the negative effects of today’s divisive politics and the alienation characteristic of postmodern societies.

SOURCES

1 Emory University Health Sciences Center (2002): Emory Brain Imaging Studies Reveal Biological Basis For Human Coop eration

2 National Institute on Ageing (2019): Social isolation, loneliness in older people pose health risks

3 American Psychological Association (2017): Social isolation, loneliness could be greater threat to public health than obesity

4 Sport Management Review (2015): The role of sport in community capacity building: An examination of sport for development research and practice

5 Anthony Giddens (2015): Modernity and self-identity

6 Neuroimage (2014): Reduced self-referential neural response during intergroup competition predicts competitor harm

ENTERTAINMENT AND AESTHETICS

Sport and the performing arts are generally seen as having little in common. But while there might be some differences between an evening at the New York Metropolitan Opera House and attending a game across town at Yankee Stadium, there are similarities too. The games that we watch carry many of the conventions of great drama: both have heroes and villains, epilogues, and prologues, but with athletic competitions, there is less assurance that the figure we empathize with will prevail. This, together with an appreciation of skill, spe e d, and form is what makes watching sport so enthralling.

Sport as a Form of Storytelling

American scholar Jonathan Gottschall wrote that humans are “as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.” 1 Narrative forms a vital component of the human spirit, and sport appeals to our urge to use this to understand our own experiences. By comparison, most sporting events carry the six major elements of the narrative arc we observe in most novels, plays, films, and television.

1 Exposition

STORY Introduction and setting the scene (who, where, when)

SPORT Pre-game analysis, entertainment: cheerleaders, pyrotechnics, national anthem

2 Rising Action

STORY A dramatic transition that introduces the key characters and their motivations

SPORT The first adversarial contact is made, blows are struck, and points are scored in the opening minutes of the game

3 Midpoint

STORY A halfway point in the storyline where the key characters face a moment of transformation

SPORT A significant turning point midway through the game (unless the competition is one-sided)

4 Climax

STORY The action reaches a crisis point with the fates of major characters hanging in the balance SPORT A controversial referee decision has to be made, an underdog creates a match-winning opportunity

5 Falling Action

STORY There is relief and release as the major characters triumph over or succumb to threatening forces SPORT The game is all but won, with one side running down the clock

6 Resolution

STORY The story is resolved, with transformed characters approaching a new state SPORT The final whistle sounds, the runner hurtles past the finish line, the final heat is called

Whether athletics, team sports or darts, each competition carries a multitude of subplots that enrich and heighten our experience when viewing. Following such live events provides a level of drama which cannot be replicated in the realm of fiction and which is considered as unscripted theatre. This notion is closely linked to the sense of spectacle that is so palpable in live sports settings. Some argue that such modern sports events mirror the format and conventions of ancient religious rituals (the original Olympic Games had a strong spiritual component), drawing on pageantry and stimuli to heighten senses and hook audiences.2

The spectacle of sport has been publicized and heightened over the years with the introduction of new media and entertainment formats. By the middle of the 20th century, sport events became street sweepers though the rise of mass media such as radio and tele vision. Today the industry has access to myriad platforms in a transmedia landscape spanning television, digital, audio, and gaming. These channels enable fans to delve into an interconnected world of sp or t watching games unfold only occupies a small percentage of the time spent engaging with sport generally, which might include immersing oneself in podcasts, reliving highlights or playing video games such as Pro Evolution Soccer or NBA 2K20.

SOURCES

1 Jonathan Gottschall (2012): The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

2 Studies in Physical Culture and Tourism (2011): Some Observations about Ritual in Sp ort

3 Sport in Society (2018): The aesthetics of sport and the arts: comp eting and complementary

The Aesthetics and Beauty of Sports

The draw of entertainment in sports is closely linked with the innate human sense of the aesthetic.3 Many are drawn to watch not just to satisfy an urge to be complicit in competition, but to witness motional poetry in the exhibition of finely-honed athletes moving in a spontaneous choreography. Although many sports seek not to produce an aesthetic display but to compete, score high, and win, they generate an aesthetic by-product in the course of these pursuits. For instance, boxers who dance in the ring create a visual choreography as they evade opponents’ shots. In this way, sport is a civilizing force that cultivates an appreciation of aesthetics feelings, tastes, and needs among the masses. Such aesthetics are more apparent in some sports: a striker in soccer earns a goal by putting the ball over the line, irrespective of how cleanly or adroitly he or she does it, but in more performative events such as figure skating, tower jumping, freestyle skiing, gymnastics, or even skateboarding panels of judges score competitors on their ability to reproduce near-perfect form. While sport fuels an innate desire of people to be entertained and to observe that which they find beautiful, both impulses carry dangers when combined with humanity’s more narcissistic or avaricious tendencies. A concern is emerging that the objective to entertain is eclipsing fair play one example is the borrowing of reality TV tropes in Formula E racing. Here, the most popular drivers can earn “fanboosts”, meaning that audience approval translates to a faster car. Meanwhile, an over-emphasis on aesthetics in sport feeds into negative body image perceptions, with female athletes reportedly feeling pressure to look good while competing. While it has long been accepted that actors and singers might adopt prima donna tendencies, we are witnessing this more in physical competitions another example, perhaps, of how sport and the arts are coalescing.

To make Formula E races more entertaining, the most popular drivers can e ar n “fanboosts”.

BUSINESS AND COMMERCE

In July 2020, a 24-year old American football quarterback set a new world record by striking the most lucrative single deal in the history of sport. The National Football League’s (NFL) 2019 Super Bowl most valuable player (MVP), Patrick Mahomes, agreed to stay with the Kansas City Chiefs in a contract that will earn him USD 503 million until 2031 (USD 3,143,750 per game for the next ten years).1 This sum might be inconceivable for anyone who falls outside the global one percent, but stories of this kind represent business-as-usual for the highly commercial world of elite sports and the ro of is getting higher. It is unlikely that Mahomes’ record will stand for long. The degree to which vast pay checks, transfer fees, and sponsorship deals are normalized illustrates how profoundly the sports landscape has come to be fueled by business and commerce. But this is only one

Greek spectators gathered at the Ancient Olympic Games to gossip, do business, and gamble.

part of the story. Without revenue generation at the top of the pyramid, e.g. by the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic Games, many national federation structures would suffer. The monetary trickle-down effe ct is crucial to fund communal infrastructure, sports equipment, leisure activity, and talent development on a youth, amateur, and grassroots level.

Sport has developed a reputation for resilience among business leaders and economists in recent decades. While a series of unforeseen events have delivered shocks to other sectors, sport seems to have been impervious to the uncertainty created by 9/11, the great recession and the digital disruption that left many industries floundering. The real economic cost of the COVID-19 pandemic on sports business is yet to be fully understood, but the sector is likely to remain in good health. The annual growth rate of the global sports market is expected to slow down to 3 percent over the next three to five years, compared to 8 percent in the timespan before the outbreak of COVID-19.2 On a global le vel, the pandemic also brought some benefits fans consumed more media content and the digital transformation was accelerated. The US represents the largest single share of the industry, followed by Western Europe. Asia/Pacific and the Middle East were projected to be the fastest growing regions, followed by North and South America.

While sports teams provide a soft power boost for the nations and cities they represent (see Politics and Soft Power section), the financial clout of big sports brands cannot be overstated. Manchester United and Manchester City are estimated to be worth GBP 330 million per year to the city’s economy. In the US, the Dallas Cowboys have been the most valuable sports franchise in the world for the last four years, valued at around USD 5 billion (a figure equal to the GDP of Jamaica).3

A Long Way to Modern Federation Structures

Today’s sports landscape might be a money-driven, commercial juggernaut, but the relationship between business and physical competition has fluctuated over the course of history. The purpose of the ancient Greek Olympic Games was not to turn a profit, but to provide a religious festival that emphasized a sense of nationhood important, as Greeks were a thinly dispersed people. However, gambling (albeit illegal) was rife and the 50,000 spectators who are thought to have flooded into Olympia would have provided local taverns, merchants, and prostitutes with a boost in revenues.4 As games were adopted some centuries later by the ancient Romans, they served to demonstrate state power and the benevolence of rulers. Under the system of munera, wealthy citizens were required to foot the cost of the games, which led to the ruination of some. In these ancient civilizations, most competitors hailed from the upper classes, while those of lower station had to look for willing benefactors.5

In the Middle Ages, sports maintained this system and militaristic sports such as jousting were even less accessible to the poor. On the arrival of the industrial revolution in northern Europe (when many of the clubs and federations we recognize today were formed), an increasing number of people were able to compete in sports as a leisure activity. But as attendance increased, it became possible to pay soccer, cricket, and rugby players a wage. The advent of new media formats fundamentally altered the sports landscape. Radio and tele vision dramatically increased the reach, appeal, and ultimately the commercial value of some sports, beside providing consumer brands the first opportunities to broaden their reach with physical competitions as their conduit. The generated funds were increasingly used for sports development on a youth, amateur, and grassroots le vel. Consequently, complex and elaborate federation structures with diverse functions evolved. This included developing and maintaining infrastructure, educating and promoting talent, as well as facilitating integration and social cohesion.

Tap on New Revenue Streams

But sponsorship and ticket sales are not the only ways that sport interconnects with business. Betting has emerged as an effective means of wealth creation for bookmakers and casinos in the digital era. In fact, global sports betting is expected to be worth USD 155.49 billion by 2024, up from 104.31 billion in 2017.6 Meanwhile, just as in Ancient Greece, sports tourism represents a source of income for cities and nations that are chosen to host major tournaments the pre-COVID-19 sports tourism market was estimated to be worth USD 45 billion globally.7 In addition, new influencer marketing strategies have emerged through the personal branding of athletes promoted through their personal social media channels. The influencer marketing category is set to increase to USD 23.52 billion by 2025, exhibiting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.8 percent with sport and fitness expected to be a major growth area.8

The commercialization of sport (as with the commercialization of anything) has evident dangers associated with greed. There is ro om here for exploitation the men’s college basketball league, the NCAA, draws criticism for refusing to pay players, even though its yearly ad revenues are often in the billions. Even more alarming is the rise of corruption and white-collar crime in sports. Over the last decade, several sports organisations have faced accusations of fraud, money laundering, and racketeering. Meanwhile, illegal sports betting and organized crime in the US has been an issue for the FBI in re cent decades. However, while the sector might require better regulation and policing, Mahomes’ story shows the industry will remain financially attractive to players, managers, agents, and executives in the 2020s. The sports landscape will continue to contribute to global value and wealth creation.

SOURCES

1 Forbes (2021): Kansas City Chiefs Are Primed To Be NFL’s Next Dynasty, Because Patrick Mahomes Took Less

2 PwC (2020): PwC’s Sports Survey 2020

3 Forbes (2021): World’s Most Valuable Sports Teams 2021

4 Olympics (2021): A spectator’s guide to the Ancient Olympic Games

5 Realm Of History (2020): Ancient Roman Gladiators: Origins and History

6 Zion Market Research (2019): Sports Betting Market by Platform, by Type, and by Sports Ty p e: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, and Fore cast, 2017–2024

7 Sports Event and Tourism Association (2020): 2019 State of the Industry

8 Grand View Research Inc. (2020): Influencer Marketing Platform Market Size Worth $23.52 Billion by 2025

POLITICS   AND SOFT POWER

Acrimony between the US and China is not new. The outbreak of the Korean War put Washington and Beijing at odds for the first time in 1950, resulting in a twenty-five-year diplomatic hiatus. The first steps toward rapprochement came from a friendship struck up by athletes at the World Table Tennis Championship in Nagoya, Japan in the spring of 1971. The visibility of the relationship between US and Chinese table tennis players paved the way eventually to the respective governments signing a diplomatic pact. Since then, the technique of “ping-pong diplomacy” has been replicated on numerous occasions to improve relations between countries.1 As one of the most recent examples, the women’s ice hockey players from North and South Korea joined forces to build a unified team during the 2018 Winter Olympic Games.2

The Art of Sports Diplomacy

As the stories above illustrate, sport represents a major component of soft power non-co ercive geopolitical persuasion through the expression of an aspirational national culture. This in turn is extremely effective in creating or restoring trust between adversarial nations . There are four key strands: 3

1 Image-building

The propagation of a national identity, expressed through uniforms, flags, pageantry, mascots, team rituals, athlete and fan demeanor, as well as the hosting of major sporting events.

2 Dialogue platform

The way in which major international sports tournaments bring together physically disparate populations. Federations and committees require protocol, regulations, and ultimately consensus. Competitions require peaceful cultural exchange.

Engaging in mediated competition with pre-defined rules and a mutual acceptance of fair play generates unity, and challenges individual perceptions of the “other”.

4 Reconciliation

Sport as a means of producing a more equal, fair, and egalitarian society. Mobilizing groups against racism, sexism, and prejudices.

Due to the above cornerstones, sport has, since its historical inception, provided a major political and diplomatic signaling tool for world leaders. The earliest and most pronounced example of sport bleeding into statesmanship is again from that crucible of major sports competitions, the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, where the games were used to propagate peace. The tradition of the Olympic truce dates back to 776 BC, when the warring city-states would lay down arms to enable droves of Greeks to travel safely to the host city of Elis.4 In the 20th century, sporting events emerged as an effective means of demonstrating the supremacy of a particular political or economic ideology, with athletes held up as superlative examples of a thriving state. The rivalry between the US and Soviet-era Russia that emerged after the communist state’s reintroduction to the 1952 Helsinki Olympics is a pronounced example of this. By contrast, before the games held in London in 1948, team USA was cautioned to scale back its performance, so as not to embarrass its European counterparts, still weakened from the effects of the Second World War.

The unified Korean ice hockey team represented a political rapprochement between North and South Korea.

SOURCES

1 Mayumi Itoh (2011): The Origin of Ping-Pong Diplomacy

2 The Guardian (2019): When the North and South Korean hockey teams met for the first time

3 International Area Studies Review (2013): Soft power at home and abroad: Sport diplomac y, p olitics and peace-building

4 Britannica (2021): Elis, Ancient city-state, Greece

The

As global societies become increasingly complex, the intricacies of sport, diplomacy, and soft power have become more blurred and difficult to discern. A key trend afoot however is the rise of politically motivated sports funding. Countries like Germany are subsidizing sports by allowing athletes a stable income through being a member of the military services while fully focusing on a sporting career. Other states that have benefited from a recent explosion of wealth and resources, but lack a sporting culture or heritage, vie to sponsor prevalent teams and host major tournaments with few limits applied to the purse strings. Different countries have made sport a cornerstone of their international marketing strategy, acquiring sports organizations and gaining the rights to host major spor t s competitions such as the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic Games. It can be argued that in cases like this just as in Ancient Rome sport s are being used to attract attention away from an illiberal political system and social inequality. Brazil, for instance, laid a significant reputational bet on its hosting of the Olympics and FIFA World Cup within a two year timeframe (2014 and 2016, respectively). But gains for hosting were compromised by the numerous high-profile police investigations into bribery and fraud connected to the developments for the events. The result was a greater sensiti z ation to the problems and broken promises associated with the hosting of a major sporting event. At the same time western democracies struggle to get the voter approval to host major competitions.

As these examples show, sport has always been political. But never in history have athletes themselves been as politicized as they are today. The trailblazer for bringing sport and politics together was boxing great Muhammad Ali, who famously refused to fight in the Vietnam War, and consequently suffered imprisonment and a professional ban. Today, digitization makes it easier for athletes to rally behind a sp ecific causes. Sportswear brands, such as Nike, have made activism (standing in opposition to racism, sexism, and elitism in sports) a major component of their marketing campaigns. Examining recent and historical case studies, the means for cultivating soft power and better diplomacy through sport are not easily reproduced or managed. Frequently, political flashpoints translated to the field of competition produce unintended, negative consequences, particularly when managed irresponsibly by leaders with dishonorable motives.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Lebanese marathon runner May El Khalil was training in Beirut for a race in 2001 when she was knocked down by a bus. The injuries were severe El Khalil fell into a coma. While she did recover, she had to spend the following two years learning to walk again. On her hospital bed, it occurred to El Khalil that Lebanon a deeply divided nation with a painful history of conflict and discord would benefit from a unifying sports event: thus the Beirut Marathon was born. Since the first race in 2003, the event has grown into a major force for social development in the country and an inclusive culture of running has gathered momentum.1

The potential of sport for social change is widely accepted, but difficult to measure. While the Beirut Marathon puts 25 percent of its entry fees into charitable causes in the country, the true impact of the organization’s work is harder to understand. Youth running clubs, training courses for special needs individuals, and programs introducing disadvantaged communities all irrefutably contribute to social development. But perhaps the most mobilizing quality lies in the poignancy of the race itself: 48,000 people with sharply opposing political and ideological views lay aside their differences to run together for one day of the year.

Social Development Through Sports

The role of sport in enhancing quality of life, improving economic status, contributing to happiness, and encouraging positive life choices is crucial. Sports programs with the above intentions are implemented chiefly in education and in youth populations globally, the understanding b eing that physical education enhances academic performance lessons on leadership, cognition, reflexes, and cultivating team relationships are learned in the field before being taught in the classroom.2 But this rule does not hold true in every context. In the US, sports participation in colleges has risen in recent years but academic achievement in comparison with other countries has

fallen. Nevertheless, sport is understood to improve the interpersonal skills that young people need in order to live harmoniously with others. The WHO asserts that regular physical activity encourages self-expression, self-confidence, interaction and integration in young pe ople, and steers them away from bad habits such as smoking and substance abuse. But the real picture is nuanced. Sport can re duce the likelihood of delinquency in some adolescents by teaching them to adhere to a structure, game rules, and fair play, all while spurring it on in others, as competitiveness may prompt immoral behavior such as cheating, purposely injuring an opponent or using performance-enhancing drugs.3

Institutionalization of Sports Aid

In recent decades, institutions and non-government organizations have assumed the lead in using sport to improve lives. Chief among these is UNICEF, which has launched global initiatives to alleviate deep social problems using sport as a tool. Its reach is vast: the organization facilitates children’s sports clubs in El Salvador, offering an alternative to dangerous streets with high criminality rates; partners with national governments to educate children in war-torn Eastern Ukraine about the risks of landmines and rebuilds schools; and uses soccer as a means of fostering inclusivity for those with disabilities in Cuba.4 Governments, meanwhile, are becoming better at using sport for international development purposes. The EU recognizes sport as a cornerstone of its development strategies, and in 2018, the bloc announced SportHub: Alliance for Regional Development in Europe (SHARE).5 The initiative is designed to support the

UNICEF uses soccer for social development and as a means to foster inclusivity for children with disabilities.

role of sport in urban regeneration, tourism, social cohesion, innovation, and public health across member states. But the picture is not exclusively positive, as sport-for-development organizations depend upon aid agency help, which place demanding targets on the former.

Social Mobility Through Professional Sport

Sport as an industry also has a significant part to play in social development. As an employer, it sustains a huge swathe of the global population. In 2018, some 356,000 people made a living from the UK sports sector.6 In the EU, 1.7 million people worked in sport according to statistics pertaining to the same year.7 Spor t also acts as a means of achieving a better education and conse quently social mobility. South-African women who play soccer were found to gain increasing educational opportunities off the pitch.8 In the US, the system of education enables young athletes to attend high-profile and Ivy League colleges on the basis of their sporting achievements, and scholarships enable these students to get a leg up. However, the danger in this setting is the over-emphasis on sporting achievements, at the cost of educational ones.9 Biog raphers, in particular, delight in telling the rags-to-riches stories that proliferate in the world of sports. Mike Tyson, Serena Williams, Novak Đoković, and Pelé, for instance all hail from extreme poverty, but made it to the pinnacle of their respective fields, earning fortunes in the process. These stories of adversity provide fuel for countless hopeful athletes and improve their lives in real terms.

While the components of social development in many nations and cities incre ased affluence, better mental health, a stronger sense of community seem to improve slowly (if at all), sport represents a realistic means of achieving these objectives, although patience and foresight are crucial. As El Khalil emphasized in her TED Talk : “Peacemaking isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon.” 10

SOURCES

1 Beirut Marathon Association (2021): President Profile

2 Research Papers in Education (2009): The educational benefits claimed for physical education and school sport: An academic review

3 Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2016): Sports Participation and Juvenile Delinquency: A MetaAnalytic Review

4 UNICEF (2018): Preventing violence through sport in El Salvador

5 European Commission (2018): SHARE Initiative

6 Sport England (2019): The Sports Workforce An analysis of the pe ople who work in the sports industry

7 Eurostat (2019): Employment in Sport

8 Taylor and Francis (2015): Women's sport participation and gender equality: African women in the beautiful game

9 Harvard Political Review (2013): Sports vs. Education: A False Choice, Harvard Political Review

10 TED (2013): Making peace is a marathon: May El-Khalil at TEDGlobal 2013

NATURE AND ENVIRONMENT

It is a well-known fact that globally, urbanization has provided billions with access to higher incomes, better medical facilities, and a gre ater array of life options. But some places are more successful than others in providing residents with the opportunities that come from city living, while managing the issues that come from cramming 14,550 or even 73,000 (London and Mumbai, respectively) human beings into a square mile.1 There is now rising evidence that populations are suffering mentally from the absence of the natural world. Green space has become a priority for urbanists. Meanwhile, getting out to forests, mountains, lakes, and coastlines to engage in sport is being perceived as a vital way to develop an appreciation for the natural world and to recover from an excess of smog, concrete, and artificial light.

Re-bonding With Nature

But turfing over traffic islands, planting living walls, or encouraging citizens to make occasional jaunts to the countryside (as Japan does with its Mountain Day public holiday) is not enough to reverse the degenerative effects that people suffer due to a deficit of nature. There is a looming risk that urbanites in both inner city and suburban areas are losing the ability to know how to appreciate or benefit from natural surroundings. It is feared that as the degree to which we interface with nature declines from generation to generation, our species will care less about it over time. While this phenomenon is hard to measure, an indicator of our lessening interest in nature might be observed in how references to it in fiction, films, and song lyrics in English have been declining since the 1950s.2 But immersing in the natural world, even for as little as 20 minutes in a city park, has been demonstrated to have significant health benefits. Such benefits are only multiplied by adding the element of physical activity with others and engaging in sports in environments that are pristine, untouched, remote, and offer challenging terrain. Anything from mountain biking and overland skiing, to scaling an ice waterfall offer sizeable health benefits and draw scores of enthusiasts.3

Still Competing With Nature

We are learning more about how sport and nature can be used to forge better lives, and how sport can be used to foster a greater appreciation for the natural world. But humanity’s relationship with nature is a complicated one. Now in an era that many have branded the Anthropocene (the geological age where humans are the dominant influence), our interdependence with the natural world is at a phase of philosophical discussion. Traditional narratives propose a scenario where humanity is at odds with nature and must battle it or bend it to survive (think of Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea). It is this philosophy that has provided such an invigorating quality to the pursuits that demand interaction with the great outdoors. Nature sports such as surfing, backcountry skiing, and mountaineering are best described as sports in which athletes interact dynamically with natural features rather than compete with other humans (even though the two dimensions can of course be combined). An example of people competing with nature is the advent of the Alpinism movement that emerged during the Age of Enlightenment and Romantic Era, when peaks such as Mont Blanc seduced those with a thirst for adventure (and a head for heights). For modern times, the Ironman World Championship staged in Hawaii represents a battle with nature. But today, there is a misconception that extreme outdoor sports represent an objectification and lack of respect for nature (consider the culture wars that erupt over Westerners climbing Uluru in Australia, a sacred mountain for Aboriginal communities) but mostly, this is a misinterpretation. Research points to a reverence towards, and a rapturous appreciation of, the places where extreme sports enthusiasts go to surf, climb, ride or fall.4

Outdoor sports reflect a human condition: pitting one’s strength and intelligence against nature and env ironmental forces.

SOURCES

1 World Population Review (2021): London Population 2021 / Mumbai Population 2021

2 Perspectives on Psychological Science (2017): A Growing Disconnection From Nature Is Evident in Cultural Products

3 International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2019: Benefits of Outdoor Sports for Society. A Systematic Literature Review and Reflections on Evidence

4 Leisure/Loisir (2010): Developing an intimate “relationship” with nature through extreme sports participation

5 Protect our Winters (2020): How climate change will impact the snowsports industry

Signs of a Vicious Circle

But while those who engage in extreme sports in natural environments might be struck by their majesty, the athletes’ very presence harms the places that they are so drawn to. Greenhouse gases, soil compaction, the building of infrastructure, and outdoor facilities all contribute to this issue. While mass tourism develops an appreciation of nature, problems arise when we appreciate it too much and places become oversubscribed or polluted.

Meanwhile, the impact of climate change imperils the very existence of many sports. Protect Our Winters (POW) is an organization set up to evaluate the economic damage climate change could wre ak on the US snow sports industry in the coming years that poor years for snow would mean reduced participation, the loss of USD 1 billion in revenue, and costing 17,400 jobs compared to an average season.5

Sensitization for Sustainability Through Sports

Excessive participation in outdoor sports hurts the environment. But with appropriate management, regulation, and the implementation of cleaner practices in everything from scuba diving to base jumping , such activities contribute to safeguarding the environment by nurturing an appreciation for it. Beyond this, the visibility of mainstream sports presents a conspicuous way to promote better sustainability practices and erode partisan perceptions of doing so or not an example is the ban on plastic packaging or carbon offsetting at competitive matches in US sports or mass participation sports across Europe. This links back to business and commerce, as sponsor brands increasingly focus on eco-friendly sponsorship to reflect their sustainability criteria.

Looking Ahead

After decades of relatively stable environmental factors and media consumption trends, global commercialization and ongoing digitization have introduced a new dynamic within the international sports landscape that will require a different perspective, beyond Olympic medal tables and the latest fitness trends.

The following chapter will outline the most relevant drivers of change and their impact on two levels. On the one hand, the ongoing political, economic, technological, societal, and environmental shifts will alter spectator sports such as the major professional competitions, clubs, and athletes. On the other hand, the very same shifts will also transform how recreational sports and physical exercise will be carried out on an amateur level.

The interplay between these shifts are likely to usher in a new age of sports, one characterized not only by the constant change of technological equipment and consumer habits, but also by the redefinition of the societal status of sport.

Globalized Sports Markets and the Powerful East 48

The Virtualization of Sports and Immersive Consumer Experiences 51

Precision Sports Medicine and Human Enhancement 54

Emerging Lifestyle Diseases and New Health Culture 57

Data Analytics and Use of Artificial Intelligence 60

THE FUTURE SPORTS ENVIRONMENT

Decentralization and Erosion of Traditional Power Structures 63

Sensitization to Sustainability and Value Orientation 66

GLOBALIZED SPORTS MARKETS AND THE POWERFUL EAST

The world has become a deeply interconnected place. Advances in transportation and communication not only facilitate the international trade of goods and services, but also the cross-border exchange of ideas and culture. Meanwhile, key drivers such as polarized population growth and the ongoing urbanization will shape the global structures of tomorrow. In 2050, almost 90 percent of the global population will live outside of Europe and North America.1 Until then, 2.5 billion more people will live in urban areas, most of them in Asia and Africa. 2 These developments have far-reaching economic, social, and political implications. While new middle classes evolve, access to education and communication technology improves and market opportunities arise from a global perspective, there are also currents that run contrary to increasing cross-border integration.

National protectionism, trade wars, and countertrends in the form of regionalization are on the rise and point in the opposite direction of globalization. At the same time, the resurgence of China as a global superpower will challenge the notion of a multip olar world order. Instead, China will represent a technological, economic, and political pole in opposition to the US through a leading role in clean tech and AI, a huge domestic market with rising purchasing power as well as increasing ideological influence. Fur t hermore, many economies around the globe rely on goods and services produced in China. The value of Chinese exports accounts for more than USD 2,000 billion which make s the People’s Republic not only the world’s biggest exporter, but also a driver behind numerous South-South cooperation agreements with global inve stments in infrastructure or acquisitions of organizations that own key technologies. 3 Be sides creating enormous potential in business and commerce for public and private institutions around the globe, an increasingly bipolar world order might also lead to more tensions. Diverging economic, political, and technological spheres are likely to characterize the future bipolar world order. In extreme cases, maintaining trade and business relations with both superpowers at once will not be possible due to diverging cultural frameworks and power interests.

A trend that will gain momentum in the future is the emergence of new global sports markets due to the population growth and economic development in Asia and Africa. This will create large-scale business opportunities for the further internationalization of major sports properties such as professional soccer and basketball leagues, events and clubs, but also for the retail sports sector in which new middle classes increasingly participate, spurring demand for sports equipment and apparel. A key challenge in the future globalization of sports is to deal with diverging consumer expectations depending on the local economic, cultural, social, and political requirements. On a basic level, targeting foreign markets involves overcoming language barriers. This means that messages from sponsors will be increasingly displayed in Chinese characters rather than English or Spanish, which is already the case for several Premier League jerseys and European in-stadium advertising.⁴

The consideration of lo cal norms regarding cultural, religious or political frameworks also leads to more restrictions such as the banning of sports betting advertisements in certain Muslim countries or with regards to political statements on China.5 For example, after an executive of the Houston Rocket basketball team tweeted in supp or t of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, an NBA event in Shanghai was cancelled and Rockets merchandise was removed from Chinese online stores.6

Event organizers, clubs, sponsors, and athletes are quickly adapting to these new market requirements to expand their reach. This does not stop at marketing campaigns, the scheduling of sports events according to different time zones or global merchandising tours that increasingly become standard among the pre-season routines of major sports teams. While the US-based NFL has already been playing games in two London stadiums for over a decade, the staging of competitions outside of home markets to expand global fan bases will become more widespread in the future.7 In addition, the popularity of sports events such as running, triathlons, and cycling is booming in Asia, Africa, Middle East, and Latin America . Rising urbanization levels will further drive the need for outdoor sports and recreational physical exercise among the broader public. In densely populated regions, a high degree of air pollution and a lack of public facilities will become major challenges. The power shift

towards the East also leads to increasing financial streams within the global sports ecosystem in two different directions. The internationalization of sports brands such as the NBA allowed its Chinese business arm to grow to a valuation of USD 5 billion.8 On the other side, there is a rising influence of Asian and Middle Eastern investments in Europe and the US. These financial ties are mainly driven by large-scale sponsorship agreements and equity investments in soccer clubs such as Atlético de Madrid, Inter Milan or Paris Saint-Germain. In the future, the rise of China will also manifest itself in traditionally Western-dominated sports from a competitive perspective. For instance, the Chinese government has unveiled a blueprint to become a global soccer superpower by 2050 and plans to encourage 50 million children and adults to actively play the game.9 In addition, Asia will gain relevance through the export of emerging sports products, e.g. in the area of esports. These shifts are likely to further contribute to the internationalization of spor t s markets, which will ultimately increase the complexity and interdependencies of the global sports ecosystem.

SOURCES

1 United Nations (2015): UN Population 2030

2 United Nations (2018): World Urbanization Prospects

3 World Economic Forum (2018): These are the world’s biggest exporters

4 Premier League (2019): Premier League kits for the 2019/20 season

5 Dubai.com (2020): Dubai’s Take on Sports Betting

6 BBC (2019): Daryl Morey backtracks after Hong Kong tweet causes Chinese backlash

7 NFL (2020): London Games

8 Bloomberg (2019): NBA China Woes Threaten Billions of Dollars, Decades’ Work

9 BBC (2016): China aims to become soccer superpower ‘by 2050’

THE VIRTUALIZATION OF SPORTS AND IMMERSIVE CONSUMER EXPERIENCES

The vir tualization of life is not a new phenomenon. The concept describes the representation and simultaneous perception of physical reality and has been established in radio broadcasts, phone conversations, TV channels, and personal computers throughout the 20th century. However, more computing power, better data availability, digital platforms, and the mass manufacturing of smart devices facilitate virtualization on three levels. Firstly, the passive consumption of virtual experiences is becoming more widespread as smartphones guarantee constant access to the digital world. Se condly, the active and decentralized creation and distribution of pro ducts and services increas -

ingly takes place virtually, e.g. by leveraging digital tools in areas such as graphic design and publishing without depending on a complex physical infrastructure. Lastly, social interactions are shifting towards virtuality through online messaging, video calls, and social media. These three virtual fields of activity account for most of the 6 hours and 42 minutes that an average person spends online on a daily basis.1 The global coronavirus pandemic has further accelerated the trend of engaging in virtual environments and social interactions.2 One of the major limitations, however, is the inadequacy in replicating physical real-life situations, such as interactions with family members, close friends or colleagues, but also with regards to cultural events such as concerts, exhibitions, and shows that rely on the complexity and trustworthiness of physical spaces.3

Virtual consumption experiences are also becoming three-dimensional and more immersive through technological progress in VR and augmented reality (AR). While AR will increasingly extend and modify human perception through computer-generated information, VR will

simulate entirely new realities in areas such as gaming, broadcasting, navigation, education, or sexuality, and will be available on the mass market. Future VR applications will also become smaller and less cumbersome for example through lenses and translate today’s rather static social media interactions into a three-dimensional space. Next-generation VR might also involve new experiential dimensions such as scents and haptic feedback to simulate sensations of touch and environmental conditions such a s wind or rain. While VR activities will become more immersive in the future, they won’t fully replicate the complexity of real-life experiences.

Taking Sports to the Virtual Sphere

The virtualization of sports is already taking place. VR equipment, sensor-enabled gear, and smart cameras allow for the virtualization of physical sports such as cycling, fitness or dancing. Competitions and training can be transferred from the analogue world into a digital sphere by replicating the action virtually. In some sports such as cycling, major competitions like the Tour de Suisse have already been held in this manner during the global pandemic.4 While the original route and locational gradient were simulated, professional athletes competed from re-

mote locations. In ball sports such as basketball and soccer, startups offer to virtualize training drills with sensors placed on the bodies of amateur and professional athletes or by simulating plays from opp onent s to improve reaction times and tactical responses.5 Fitness workouts increasingly rely on VR technologies to augment physical exercise with coaching instructions, entertainment, and gamific ation. The future virtualization of analog sports competitions will be mainly limited by the complexity of replicating body contact such as aerial duels in soccer, board checks in ice hockey or wrestling in combat sports.

Besides the virtualization of analog sports, esports are rapidly evolving as a separate discipline: by using video games on personal computers or game consoles, they create sports competitions with minimal physical activity. The gaming industry will be worth USD 174 billion by the end of 2021 in Asia alone.6 This goes in hand with a further commercialization and professionalization of the e sp orts sector in which the sum of over USD 850 million has been recorded in all-time prize money, most of which was disbursed between 2010 and 2020.7

In addition, espor ts communities are becoming digital spheres for social interactions and comprise a globally unifying element. This shift is reflected by the fact that traditional sports associations in South Korea, China, and the US already consider esports as official sports, with more countries expected to follow in the future.8 It is also expected that esp orts will increasingly influence

SOURCES

1 The Next Web (2019): Digital trends 2019

2 Economist (2020): Remote work is here to stay

3 World Economic Forum (2020): User Behaviour, Preferences and Concerns

4 Tour de Suisse (2020): Weltpremiere the digital Swiss 5

5 Forbes (2020): Sports Tech Comes Of Age With VR Training, Coaching Apps And Smart Gear

6 Statista (2020): Gaming industry in Asia Pacific statistics & facts

7 esports Earnings (2021): Prize Money recorded

8 Forbes (2013): The U.S. Now Recognizes esports Players As Professional Athletes

9 PWC (2019): Sports industry: time to refocus?

10 Oculus (2021): Go Courtside in VR with NBA League Pass Games in Venues on Oculus Quest

the traditional sports landscape in areas such as the staging of live events, streaming services, participation opportunities for fans, and the orchestration of merchandising activities.

Next to esports and virtualized analogue sports formats, digital technologies such as streaming services, social media, and VR are changing sports consumption radically. Online streaming has become a major channel for the consumption of content across a wide range of sports such as soccer, American football, basketball, tennis, and boxing. Almost 60 percent of millennials across Europe are already consuming sports content through digital streaming services.9 At the same time, social media snippets short previews and sequences of sports highlights are becoming a major tool to automate the distribution of sports content at scale. In the future, this will lead to more reach for digital platforms, but also a more fragmented consumption and a loss of simultaneity in the shared experience of live sport events. Future sports content and formats will adapt to changing consumer expectations and learned behaviors from social media, e.g. by launching shorter and round-based sequences of live action, guaranteeing highlights at a higher pace, and offering consumers opportunities for emotional engagement. Fur thermore, VR and AR technologies offer a powerful way to virtually simulate an immersive sports consumption experience and will become more widespread as the affordability of hardware equipment and VR broadcasting quality improve. Advancements of existing VR enabled sports offerings such as the collaboration between the NBA and Oculus will allow users to personalize sports content based on 360-degree broadcasting perspectives and ultimately make sports consumption and fan engagement more immersive experiences.10

MEDICINE

AND       HUMAN ENHANCEMENT

Advancements in diagnostics continuously improve the understanding of human health. This allows for a more accurate and indepth analysis of the present and future health status of individuals and a more realistic estimation of the performance potential of human minds and bodies. Genetic pro cedures such as DNA tests, neuroscientific progress, medical imaging, and wearable-based real time tracking of healthcare data help to personalize prevention and treatments. The field of pre cision medicine leverages the advancements in medical research and the increasing availability of health-related data to make pre cise and customized care more accessible to an increasing number of people.1 For instance, the price for genome sequencing has dropped to under USD 1,000, while the procedure can often be performed in a single day.2 In the future, techniques such as the use

of stem cells or gene editing will offer an even wider range of opportunities for the prevention and tre atment of conditions such as cancer or hereditary diseases. In contrast with precision medicine, the field of human enhancement aims at the improvement of natural physical or mental capabilities by modifying non- p athological human traits.3 Genetic enhancements might increasingly use deliberate and targeted modifications of genetic sequences of embryos and adults in the f uture, e.g. to improve bone structure or muscle development. There are both physical and mental forms of human enhancement.

Physical enhancements use substances such as blood doping or technical augmentations like implants and functional prosthesis to improve physical capabilities and motoric skills. On the other hand, mental enhancements leverage drugs like nootropics that have an impact on the central nervous system or computerenabled we arable devices to improve cognitive abilities in areas such as memory, creativity, and communication. While ethical concerns and legal issues will increasingly arise in the future, the glob al mar ket for human enhancements is expected to grow at a C AGR of 38 percent between 2020 and 2025.4

Medical Research as a Game Changer

Precision sports medicine relies on individualized approaches for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of professional and amateur athletes, including a wide

range of subfields such as nutrition, physical training, surgery, and recovery methods. Research on elite soccer players has shown that individualized recovery strategies are beneficial in alleviating post-match fatigue, regaining performance quicker and mitigating the risk of injury.5 An emerging field is the use of genetics and genomics to detect predispositions of athletes to injury or the decision on suitable intervention or treatment methods through surgery or pharmaceuticals. A research interest lies in the impact of environmental factors such as exposure to stress, nutrition, sleep, diet, and social interactions. The environment and lifestyle of an athlete is expected to have a significant impact on how genes and the genome f unction, e.g . in relation to the long-term effects of injuries.6 Besides optimizing performance levels, one of the main future consequences of using precision medicine in sports will be to allow athletes to pursue active care ers at a top level for a longer period of time. This not only extends monetization opportunities for professional athletes and sports organizations, but also allows amateur and recreational sportspeople to engage in physical exercise at more advanced ages. This comes at the risk of rising inequality. When the individualization of prevention and treatment becomes a competitive advantage or a privilege, the gap between wealthy athletes or organizations and their poorer counterparts will increase further. Human enhancement continuously increases performance levels in the world of sports and allows athletes to stretch human boundaries by running faster, jumping higher, and shooting more accurately. The main leverages are twofold: on one hand, high-tech materials such as aquadynamic swimsuits and energy-saving shoes with multiple carbon plates enable athletes to perform better and provide a competitive advantage. On the other hand, medical interventions such as LASIK eye surgery allow golf champions such as Tiger Woods to gain perfect vision, while a ligament-replacing elbow surgery allegedly helps baseball pitchers to become stronger than before the treatment.7 In the future, genetic enhancements to improve the stamina, speed or strength of athletes might become more widespread. This also holds for mental enhancements that improve cognitive capabilities in areas such a s de cision making and reaction times. Future developments of human enhancement may lead to the creation of new formats and adaptations that branch off from existing sports and become new disciplines. Potential sports formats range from sprinting competitions enhanced by carbon-fiber prostheses to nootropic-enabled

high-speed ball games. But in most sports, human enhancement will evolve more gradually, based on existing medic al and technological procedures and equipment. As the range of potential enhancement is increasing fast, institutions such as big technology corporations, pharmaceutical companies, academia, and medtech start-ups will gain more relevance in the future world of sports. Procedures and innovations that improve human performance levels through precision sports medicine as well as reproductive, physical or mental enhancements will raise serious concerns regarding fair play and ensuring a level playing field. In the future, regulatory bodies might be confronted with a situation in which certain jurisdictions allow the use of genetic procedures to improve the stamina , speed or strength of athletes. In tomorrow’s sports environment, ethical and legal frameworks will be continuously challenged by the speed of technological progress and varying value systems across geographies, making it even harder to draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate forms of precision sports medicine and human enhancement.

SOURCES

1 Nature (2016): Precision medicine

2 National Human Genome Research Institute (2021): The Cost of Sequencing a Human Genome

3 Science Direct (2013): Genetic Enhancement

4 Mordor Intelligence (2021): Human Enhancement Market – Growth, Trends, Covid-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021–2026)

5 Sports Medicine (2021): Recovery in Soccer: Part I PostMatch Fatigue and Time Course of Recovery

6 Strength and Conditioning Journal (2017): Precision Sports Medicine: The Future of Advancing Health and Performance in Youth and Beyond

7 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2006): Rethinking Enhancement in Sport

EMERGING LIFESTYLE DISEASES AND NEW HEALTH CULTURE

The human population is getting older. Improved access to healthcare, reduced child mortality, and rising income levels have led to a sharp increase in life expectancy around the globe. Since 2000, global life expectancy at birth has climbed to 72 years, the fastest rise since the 1960s.1 Shifting demog raphics are the consequence: the world p opulation aged over 60 years will reach 2.1 billion in 2050, a trend which is accompanied by a changing disease spectrum. 2 Non-communicable dise a ses (NCDs) such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease already account for more than 70 percent of deaths worldwide.3 While the ageing of society will only further increase the rates of these illnesses, behavioral patterns in areas such a s physical activity, nutrition, alcohol, and smoking are at the ro ot of many lifestyle diseases across all age groups. Expanding healthcare systems increasingly

allocate financial resources to public health measures. The costs of global healthcare have risen to USD 7.8 trillion, which represents 10 percent of the world’s GDP.4 The trend of rising healthcare costs is expected to continue in the future due to ageing and a transition from acute to chronic conditions, regulatory complexity, the availability of new healthcare services, as well as disincentives of healthcare providers and patients.

A promising transformation to tackle rising healthcare costs in the future is the shifting focus from treatment to prevention.5 The digitiz ation of healthcare enables individuals and organizations to track and manage health conditions proactively, e.g. through wearable devices that recommend physical activity and medical che ck-ups to effectively prevent lifestyle diseases. In the future, health will also be defined in a more holistic way, including not only physical well-being, but also psychological and social aspects. This more comprehensive approach to human health will be extended by an increasing health awareness based on an improved understanding b etwe en behavioral decisions and wellbeing, but also due to a new health culture with the aim of staying youthful and productive throughout different life stages. As a consequence, more decisions in everyday life in areas such as diet, mobility, working, and recreation will be considered health decisions.

Cutting Health Costs Through Sports

In response to an ageing society and the prevalence of chronic illnesses, moderate sporting activities such as running or cycling will increasingly serve as an instrument to prevent lifestyle diseases and as a strategy to tackle rising healthcare costs. Addressing physical inactivity will represent a major target for sports interventions as adults in urban areas spend 77 percent of their waking time being inactive at their workplace.6 In addition, sport offerings tailored to the needs of specific age groups are associated with positive effects on physical, mental, and social health, e.g. by adjusting the frequency, length, and intensity of training to meet the requirements of older people.7 At the same time, recreational and amateur sports may cause adverse health effects such as musculoskeletal disorders, typically when the body is held in an asymmetric position and repetitive movements are made, such as in the case of bowling, golf or tennis.8 Public spending for the treatment of health conditions and injuries caused by sports and extreme forms of physical activity will increasingly come under pressure. Even though not all sorts of physical activity can be considered as promoting health, public and private incentive schemes leverage sport as a means of cutting healthcare costs. The self-quantification of individual behavior and health metrics such as heart rate and blood pressure through wearable devices will serve as a basis to

SOURCES

1 World Health Organization (2019): Global Health Estimates: Life expectancy and leading causes of death and disability

2 United Nations (2017): World Population Ageing

3 World Health Organization (2020): Total NCD Mortality

4 World Health Organization (2019): Global Spending on Health: A World in Transition

5 Nature (2020): From treatment to prevention: The evolution of dig ital healthcare

6 International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (2019): Effect of workplace physical activity interventions on the cardiometabolic health of working adult s

7 BMC Public Health (2017): Sport and ageing: a systematic review of the determinants and trends of par ticipation in sport for older adults

8 Tel Aviv University (2008): Amateur Sports Can Lead to Unexpected Health Problems Later in Life

9 Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine UK (2021): The Role of Physical Activity and Sport in Mental Health

10 OECD (2020): Mental health problems costing Europe heavily

11 Statista (2021): Global sports equipment market size 2012 to 2023

12 Mordor Intelligence (2021): Sports Nutrition Market Growth, Trends, Covid-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 – 2026)

create reward systems. While healthy and active individuals may take advantage of such offerings in the future, the practices raise concerns regarding privacy and solidarity, e.g. in the case of personalized insurance policies.

Sp or t will also gain relevance in the context of a more holistic definition of health that reflects physical, mental, and social aspects. While physical benefits and the fact that moderate sport reduces the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases have been studied and understood for decades, the positive influence on mental wellbeing is increasingly coming to light.9 The UK-based Royal College of Psychiatrists recommends physical activity as a modality for treatment and therapy of mental dis orders such as anxiety and depression. Besides the positive impact on quality of life for individuals, there is a huge economic potential considering the estimated EUR 600 billion that the 28 member states of the European Union spend on the treatment of mental health il ln e sses. 10 Furthermore, the communality aspect of many team sports and physical activity practiced in groups offer a wide range of social interactions. These social ties both quantitative and qualitative are associated with various short- and long-term health-related benefits and are considered as a cost-effective strategy to promote physical and mental wellbeing.

As health awareness in the broader public increases and more behaviors are assessed for their health-related effects, sport will also become an integral part of decision-making in everyday life and spill over into areas such as living , commuting, and vacations: Considerations regarding access to sport facilities from home, the use of electric bikes for daily commutes, or the combination of sports and holidays will gain relevance and serve as examples of a sport-focused health culture. This trend is also reflected in an expected market growth for sports-related products and services. The value of the sports equipment market mainly consisting of goods such as balls, nets, racquets, and footwear is projected to reach USD 150 billion by 2023, a 20 percent increase compared to 2020.11 As a consequence of increased health awareness, similar trends are expected in other domains such a s the sp orts nutrition market in which the main consumers athletes and bodybuilders are increasingly joined by recreational and lifestyle customers.12

DATA ANALYTICS AND USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Better performing sensors and the ubiquitous use of information technology allow for the precise data-based quantific ation of behavior, health, and environmental factors. But it was only through the expansion of computing power that the extraction of meaningful insights out of large-scale data sets became feasible and affordable. In the future, a wide range of computing devices anywhere from the public space to industrial factories and private homes will shape the interconnectivity of the data-driven world. There are expected to be over 55 billion conne c ted devices by 2025.1 Beside s improving decision-making, the main potentials of analytics lie in the improvement of forecasts as well as the automated personalization of products and services. In many industries such a s healthcare, mobility, and retail, the capability of obtaining and analyzing large-scale datasets will become a competitive advantage, e.g. by improving customer experiences or increasing efficiency through predictive maintenance.

Data analysis is also at the core of a bundle of technologies that are summarized under the umbrella term AI: technologies such as computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning are used to automate behavior and decision-making commonly associated with human intelligence. AI-enabled applications range from the interpretation of medical images, to the generation of architectural decisions, and the language-

based handling of customer queries. While AI can certainly perform complex activities in narrowly define d subfields, AI technologies in their current state can best be described as powerful pattern recognition tools for the automation of standardized and repetitive tasks, rather than a replication of human intelligence in a broader sense.

Riding the Big Data Wave in Sports

The precondition for data analytics in sports is the availability of high-quality data. More prevalent camera systems, the use of wearables such as GPS-enabled track suits and smart watches, an increasingly sensor-equipped infrastructure, and historical sports d at abases lay the foundation for sports analytics. Consequently, data-driven insights will increasingly become a competitive ad-

vantage by improving scouting and recruitment, talent development, technical and mental training, as well as health and fitness. At the same time, the role of human intuition will shrink: spotting a highly talented prospect, substituting a player at the perfect moment or preparing a team mentally for a high-pressure situation will b e inc reasingly guided by data-based insights. In the future, sports data analytics will be further professionalized through research centers that rely on interdisciplinary expertise from computer science, statistics, medical research, and business.

While professional sports organizations are leveraging analytics, data-driven insights will also gain traction in leisure sports. Fitness routines can be personalized based on locational, behavioral, and health-rel ated information. Wearable devices and mobile applications not only recommend intensity, frequency, and workouts to improve physical and vitality parameters such as stamina and blood pressure, but also suggest technical improvement through posture recognition in golf or shooting technique in basketball. In the future, these tools might also enable individuals to develop their skills independently from centralized and location-dependent sports academies. As datadriven insights gain relevance in the future, so will the organizations that can provide analytical capabilities. The rise of sports tech companies is likely to be dominated by the US: between 2014 and 2019, US-based sports tech funding totaled USD 8 billion, which is four times the figure for second-

ranked China.2 Regardless of the driving force behind the rise of sports tech companies, concerns regarding data privacy will be emerging along the way, as sports analytics relies on sensitive personal information.

Fur thermore, data analytics can also contribute to optimizing fan engagement. The use of large data sets offers ways to increase the fan base, build long-term relationships, and drive revenues. One focus area is the improvement of in-stadium spectator experience through automation and personalization. As attendees connect their devices with arena infrastructure, this enables service providers to, for example, customize matchdayrele vant content and statistics, create more efficient queuing systems for catering, and dynamic pricing based on historical data and personalized discounts. These offers can be realized by building a digital stadium platform on which third-party developers can build their applications. At the same time, the future interconnectivity also incre ases the vulnerability of the digital infrastructure, because external parties access core infrastructure. For instance, cyberattack incidents occurred at all five Winter and Summer Olympic Games between 2010 and 2018.3 The risk of such incidents will become a more pressing issue as the complexity of digital sports systems increases.

Towards

Sports Betting

A growing market in which data analytics and AI will play a major role in the future is the sports betting sector. While sophisticated statistical models have been already well established for decades, algorithms will increasingly calculate odds in real time for micro betting. For example, instead of putting money on halftime or end results, micro betting enthusiasts will try to forecast the outcome of a single at-bat in baseball or the stroke technique of a tennis player during an ongoing rally. The precondition is a minimal delay of live broadcasts in order to avoid disadvantageous effects on the bet offering. Furthermore, algorithms might partially take over the betting activity from gamblers . The idea would be to invest a certain amount in a predictive model that allocates single bets based on historical data. While the entertainment aspect is likely to lose relevance in this case, the goal of making money will drive demand for such offerings.

While data analysis is already well established in areas such as sports betting, talent scouting, and tactical analysis , the use of AI in sports is still in its infancy. Critics might be concerned that sport will lose its human element if games or competitions are strictly played in the most efficient and effective way. But due to their reliance on historical data and insignificant correlations, a lot of human skills will not be mimicked by algorithms any time soon. Emotional intelligence in coaching or creative variations in tactics will therefore mostly remain human domains. Nevertheless, an AI system has already processed information from over 400 sports and automatically generated text- and image-based ideas for the gameplay, rules, and even the logo of a new sports format called Speedgate.4 Speedgate combines familiar elements of soccer, rugby and croquet based on pattern recognition and demonstrates how AI technology could even automate creative processes in sports. Another area in which AI will gain traction is the simulation of sports competitions based on historical data. For instance, the greatest athletes of all times would be able to compete with each other. AI-generated simulations could generate tennis matches between Steffi Graf and Serena Williams, boxing rounds between Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, or even soccer games between World Cup winning teams from different eras. While these kinds of simulations will increasingly attract attention from sports experts, fans, and technology enthusiasts, the popularity among broader spectator groups will likely remain limited due to the lack of simultaneity compared to a real-world live event.

SOURCES

1 International Data Corporation (2020): IoT Growth Demands Rethink of Long-Term Storage Strategies

2 SportsPro Media (2020): Sports tech investment: Where are the venture capitalists spending their money?

3 Center for Security Studies ETH Zurich (2020): Trend Analysis Cybersecurity at Big Events

4 Speedgate (2021): What is Speedgate?

DECENTRALIZATION AND EROSION OF TRADITIONAL    POWER    STRUCTURES

While the rise of the internet provides access to information and knowle dge networks, digital platforms make it possible to build large communities. The extent of information appetite and interconnectivity is staggering: 5.6 billion searches are made on Google ever y day, and the global WhatsApp us er base sends 29 million messages per minute. 1, 2 Th e combination between improved access to information and digital interconnectivity drives the democratization of economic, societal, technological, and political dec i sion-making processes. One cornerstone is the possibility to create and distribute content, products and services through digital tools such as online platforms and social media. Indeed, the building of websites, editing of music or video, and the publishing of media content are increasingly performed independently from a complex infrastructure.

At the same time, platform models such as Amazon, Alibaba, and Airbnb provide economic opportunities for niche players and individuals who can extend distribution and reach. The scalability of these marketplaces leads to monopolization tendencies, which can result in the abuse of market power by the ne w dominators of the digital age.

As a consequence, the rise of new players such as social media corporations, decentralized grassroots initiatives, and influencers with high global reach increasingly challenge traditional power structures. In parallel, consumers call for more participatory and inclusive decision-making processes. While participation and inclusion will allow the consideration of more diverse perspectives and interests, the complexity and length of decision-making processes will increase. In addition, decentralization through technologies such as blockchain and crowdfunding challenge the ability of centralized authorities such as national regulators to define and enforce binding standards. The same holds for traditional experts who are increasingly supplanted by social media influencers, conspirators, and pseudo-scientists with dubious backgrounds and agendas.

Everyone’s Game Through Digital Participation

Today’s amateur athletes can digitally access entire libraries containing information, knowledge, and wisdom regarding all aspects of sports and physical activity. Online portals allow fans to replicate the workouts, diet, and sle ep routines of their preferred athletes, while tracking through wearable technology provides access to medical information and individualized training recommendations. At the same time, digital platforms such as Joggingbuddy (running) or Footyaddicts (soccer) facilitate the self-organization of collective sports based on preferred locations and time slots of users. Consequently, re creational sports increasingly organize themselves independently from centralized institutions such as federations or clubs and become aligned with more flexible lifestyles. Sports enthusiasts also leverage digital tools to produce and distribute sports content at scale. The virtual commentary studio Spalk.tv lets professionals and amateurs produce and broadcast sports commentary from a remote setup and grow their own audiences in

markets with limited coverage.3 This allows even amateur commentators to customize their craft according to the language, level of expertise, or fandom of specific target audiences. The same holds for blogs and social media communities that reach global audiences through the publication of tactical analysis, transfer rumors or sport equipment re views. In the case of ex-blogger René Maric, his contributions to a soccer blog even opened the doors to a position as assistant coach for the German top flight soccer club Borussia Mönchengladbach.4

Participation through digital platforms is also gaining relevance in the decision-making of sports organizations. Fan engagement borrows conventions from gaming and reality TV to make consumer experience and content cr e ation more engaging, e.g. through voting on logo or shirt designs. Sports formats such as CrossFit and Formula E even go a step further by allowing spectators to influence the very competition itself: CrossFit enthusiasts can engage in community votes to determine the workouts in which athletes compete, while Formula E fans can give their favorite driver an extra power boost.5, 6 Digit al participation may further facilitate the engagement of sports fans and open up ne w revenue streams in the future. But as soon as the inclusion of fans and audiences leads to competitive advantages of their favorite athletes or teams, principles of fairness and a level playing field are threatened.

It is not only the decision-making processes of sports organi zations that are becoming

SOURCES

1 Internet Live Stats (2020): Google Searches today

2 Business of Apps (2021): WhatsApp Revenue and Usage Statistics (2020)

3 Spark (2021): Virtual Sportscasting Studio

4 Kicker (2020): Vom Blogger zum CoTrainer: René Marics unge wöhnlicher Weg

5 Crossfit Games (2018): 18.5 Recap: The People’s Choice

6 Formula E (2021): Fanboost

7 PWC (2019): How blockchain and its applications can help grow the sports industry?

8 The Guardian (2019): Covid impact puts European super league plan back in play

more participatory funding and financing are changing rapidly as well. Crowdfunding models open up financial opportunities for small investors and charitable organizations, while distributed ledger technologies (DLT) such as blo ckchains make entirely new funding approaches possible, such as through tokenization. Digital tokens could be used to allow private and institutional investors to acquire a share in an athlete’s career revenues or partial ownership of a sports stadium. Already over 50 tokens have been issued in the sports industry by startups such as SportyCo, GlobaTalent or NetScouts.7 While DLT technologies and crowdfunding make sports financing and investing more accessible for new investment groups and partially independent from centralized authorities, the unregulated environment entails a risk of fraud. Increasing commercialization, digital platforms, and demands for more participation and inclusion are continuously eroding traditional power structures. In many sports, a power shift from national federations to powerful clubs is observable. The most successful clubs will gain long-standing influence and build up pressure. An example is the plan for a European Super League that combines the wealthiest clubs of the major soccer leagues. Such ambitions flared up in the aftermath of the financial woes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.8

At the same time, there is a shift towards empowered athletes, who can increasingly use social media and their enor mous fan bases to exert influence over clubs and federations. In the future, the entry of new actors such as private equity firms with heavy interests in shortterm profits or big technology corporations such as Amazon, Facebook,or Google might lead to a more complex sports landscape. The erosion of traditional power str uc tures due to the shrinking weight of federations could potentially lead to a power vacuum and to a negative impact on youth development, grassroots sports, and local communities.

SENSITIZATION TO SUSTAINABILITY AND  VALUE-

The increasingly noticeable and tangible consequences of climate change such as droughts, overheated city centers, and flooding have a g rowing effect on human environments.1 Today, the rising awareness of environmental concerns is building the foundation for change s of individual consumer behavior in areas such as travelling, nutrition, and mobility. This shift is also mirrored by booming markets such as green tech and electric mobility.2

In the future, the adaptation of social, political, and economic structures will be promoted through new legislation to punish pollution and the implementation of circular economy models that incentivize environmentallyfriendly practices. As a result, organizations as well as individuals will have a more limited scope of action as new restrictions are imposed to limit their ecological fo o tprint. This also means that

corporations and public figures whose actions are considered as unecological by the media or non-government al organizations (NGO) will increasingly face public backlash. But there is also a financial dimension to this phenomenon. Investors increasingly fo c us on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria to allocate their financial resources. This might create disadvantages for sports organizations and athletes who are not operating according to transparent sustainability standards.

While su stainability represents a core pillar of contemporary Western belief systems, a multitude of v alue orientations has emerged. The shift towards a multi-optional society promotes a wide range of individualized lifestyles in the digital age.3 A growing focus on diversity and inclusion expressed through the Black Live s Matter movement or demands for more gender equality on l y partially cover the value spectrum. Anti-democratic forces and authoritarian views are also represented in an increasingly fragmented societal belief system. As automation and digital disruptions fuel the sense of job insecurity and recurring pandemics create anxiety about the future, a grow ing demand for orientation and guidance based on clear value frameworks will emerge. As a result, organizations and public persons will need to clearly position themselves in terms of credibility and trustworthiness. At the same time, they will increasingly face the risk of being publicly shamed and penalized for voicing convictions and beliefs.

The rising outrage in the face of climate emergencies and the failure of authorities to act is ushering in an era in which audiences care more about the ecological footprint of tournaments and sports events. Of the total gre enhouse gas emissions of major sports tournaments, 85 percent come from travel and accommodation.4 In response, the Paris Organizing Committee of the 2024 Olympic Games announced a 55 percent carbon footprint reduction compared to London and Rio.5 Another major environmental factor on an individual level is sports tourism. Winter sport facilities, mountain climbing, and adventurous sports tours in remote areas are a source of pollution. The massive littering of high-altitude camps and mountaineering tracks at Mount Everest is only one of numerous examples.6 As aw areness of sustainability issues is rising globally, more backlash against negative environmental consequences can be expected, which might result in restrictions regarding carbon emissions of sports organizations or individual athletes. More tangible impacts of climate change itself can be observed through rising average temperatures and pollution. The hosting of winter sports events and tourism will become more challenging because of phenomena such as unstable snow conditions in alpine regions. A redesign of sche dules, locations, and slope designs will be required in many regions due to increasing average temperatures. Consequently, certain sponsorship engagements, e.g. by producers of winter tires or all-wheel drive vehicles, are likely to decline.

On the other hand, high levels of pollution also have an impact on athletes’ health. Poor air quality due to wildfires in Australia or cancelled marathons because of smog issues (such as in Bangkok in 2020) will become more widespread.7 This will also represent a major concern for public authorities that aim to promote recreational outdoor sports in heavily urbanized areas. Meanwhile, sport will also increasingly serve as an instrument to raise awareness for ecological sustainability among the broader public. The wide reach, regular touchpoints, and emotional significance of sports events can be leveraged by public institutions, NGOs, and sponsors and, most importantly, by sports organizations themselves. The EFL League Two (Englands 4th division) soccer club, Forest Green Rovers, serves as a prime example. The club has been certified as the world’s first carbon-free soccer organization. The club’s ground is powered by renewable

energy and only vegan food is served to players, staff, and fans. Future projects include a new ground called Eco Park which will be built out of wood and provide electric vehicle and bike charging stations.8 As such initiatives are still rare, sports organizations and athletes might be increasingly required in the future to reveal their environmental emissions and take action to limit their ecological footprints. The UN Sports for Climate Action is an initiative designed to support sports organizations in achieving global climate change goals.9

Similar to ecological concerns, societal issues are also increasingly expressed and addressed in the world of sports. One of the most prominent shifts is a growing share of women present in sport sectors that were traditionally dominated by men. As a consequence, more female competitions can be expected to follow the English FA Women’s Super League (soccer) that became fully professional in 2018.10 Besides gender equality, a strong movement against racism has emerged in the professional sports landscape. Ever since Colin Kaepernick protested against police brutality by kneeling in NFL games dur ing the national anthem, the Black Lives Matter movement continues to be present throughout global competitions. The ambition to use sport as an effective means to address societal issues is also increasingly extended to human rights. Initiatives such as the protests against human rights violations of migrant workers who constructed stadiums for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar will become more widespread. Ultimately, social values will become more important in the future world of sports, as athletes and organizations will be expected to share their beliefs and opinions on pressing issues and act upon them accordingly. Critics might worry that one of the supposedly last un-politicized spheres will increasingly represent a battlefield for social and environmental matters.

SOURCES

1 European Commission (2021): Climate change consequences

2 McKinsey (2020): Electric mobility after the crisis: Why an auto slowdown won’t hurt EV demand

3 University of St. Gallen (2015): I-Society: How multi-optionality is pushing individualisation in the digital age

4 Clean Energy Wire (2018): Sustainability concept bolsters Germany’s football Euro 2024 bid

5 Paris 2024 (2021): A responsible Project

6 National Geographic (2019): Trash and Overcrowding at the Top of the World

7 NIKKEI (2020): Smog-choked Bangkok struggles to improve air quality

8 Forest Green Rovers (2021): Eco Park

9 United Nations (2021): Sports for Climate Action

10 UEFA (2021): Women’s Football

Envisioning the Next Phase

Considering the changing sports landscape, scientific progress, and new media consumer behavior, the future of sport needs to be imagined more broadly. What role are powerful sports organizations with global appeal and massive funding going to play? How will trends such as virtualization manifest themselves in the light of increasing demand for communal experiences? Will the new health culture express itself in the design of public infrastructure and urban development?

The following chapter investigates these questions by outlining nine predictions that connect the most relevant shifts and discuss the implications at the individual and societal levels. Each prediction will be complemented by a bold and visionary scenario * to stimulate discussion regarding the desirability of the underlying developments, and indeed how to shape the future of sports as a whole.

* Some of the locations, people, and proper names in the b old scenarios are fictional.

Immersive Public Viewing 80 Worldwide Agorithmic Scouting 86

Autonomous Robotic Competitions 92

Civilian Pports Service 98 The Sportify Disrupution 104

Gig

Physical Exclusivity, Virtual Masses 83

Algorithms as Commodity, Differentiation by Humans 89

Robotic Spectacles, Humans in Control 95

Next Level Relevance, New Fields for Social Innovation 101

Personalized Consumption, New Basis for Commercialization 107

New Power to Athletes, Traditional Structures Under Pressure 113

Multidimensional Optimization, New Ethical Challenges 119

Everyday Life as the New Sports Environment, Adaption of Infrastructure 125

The biggest and most influential sport clubs will expand to new business areas such as health care, mobility, and finance in the future. Will soccer clubs be leading the way to groundbreaking innovations of the 21st century?

I.SUPERCLUB ECOSYSTEMS

In 2024, a new soccer superpower emerged in central Europe: FC Bisonte, founded in a picturesque town, won the domestic division and Champions League nabbing both titles shortly after the club’s debut season.

Critics drew attention to FC Bisonte’s owners a syndicate of Silicon Valley billionaire entrepreneurs compl aining that the wealth of such a club put it at an unfair advantage. Indeed, “Biso” had headhunted the most gifted players in the world and had recruited tacticians using AI strategy tools to assess probabilities and match outcomes. In subsequent years, FC Biso continued to occupy a slot in the top five clubs in Europe, garnering a global following.

By 2030, FC Biso was the most famous club in the world. But the owners were not satisfied to ape the activities of other long-standing soccer institutions. At the start of a new decade, elite soccer had become a homogenized market with clubs creating standardized offerings to appeal to global markets. The owners of FC Biso would devise an ecosystem of products to solve the world’s most complex problems. In a historic keynote club co-founder Bert Van Berkel declared: “Amazon is more than a bookseller, Google is more than a search engine. We’ll show you that FC Biso is more than a soccer team.”

The first subsidiary to be launched was B+, FC Biso’s foray into public health, with a stated ambition of raising global average life expectancy to 150 years within a decade. Using nutrition, biotech, nanotech, and digital health expertise from a board of sports medicine luminaries, B+ achieved this goal, revolutionizing wellbeing and longevity. FC Biso’s antiv iral nanob ot treatment, BisoSwarm,

eradicated viral pandemics. Shortly after its first Champions League win, FC Biso piloted a hyperloop shuttle, enabling people to travel from its stadium station in the south of Bisonte to major European capitals such as Paris or Berlin in under 10 minutes.

But amongst such achievements, the company also experienced failures. The third industry that the club sought to disrupt was finance and banking. Following the financial crash of 2030, FC Biso launched BisoBank, a digital financial services company that used blockchain technology to create a global currency, BisoCoin. Millions of people around the world r ushed to convert their dollars, pounds, euros, and yuan into BisoCoins stored on secure network servers. They watched their wealth increase as the worth of a single coin spiraled upwards. But when the infamous BisoCoin bubble burst in the summer of 2036, inve stors looked on helplessly as their wealth evaporated overnight. The investigation into BisoBank’s activities during that time uncovere d the biggest corporate criminal conspiracy in the history of the world. In 2040, FC Bi so was liquidated to reimburse those who had suffered financially from its activities.

Global Scaling, Local Diversity

* However, these two sports are organized and consume d in a fundamentally different way.

There are no surprise entries on the list of the world’s most popular sports. The leader board, according to geography website WorldAtlas, runs like this: soccer (4 billion fans over half the glob al human population), cricket (2.5 billion), hockey (2 billion ice and field combined *), tennis (1 billion), volleyball (900 million), table tennis (875 million), basketball (825 million), baseball (500 million), rugby (475 million), and golf (450 million).1 As the appeal of this group of ten sports shows no sign of slowing, niche and narrow-interest games are being side-lined. But while evidence suggests that the big ten will get even bigger in the coming years, less-followed sports will expand their hardcore audiences too.

The Big Ten Continue to Rise

The most significant difference between sport’s big ten and the plethora of others (including squash, snooker, cycling, darts, badminton, judo, figure skating, skiing, etc.) is heritage. G enerally speaking, the sports with the biggest followings are those that built a bedrock of fans in the latter part of the 19th century. With the exception of golf, these sports were first played in newly industrialized cities and solidified their fan base through the emergence of broadcasting, from the wireless radio to the smartphone. With most fans accessing sports through emerging

media channels, the games that best lent themselves to broadcasting secured the strongest foothold in our collective consciousness. Today, content that is peripheral to actual sport coverage is more of a money-spinner than e ver. Consider the investments that broadcasters make in punditry alone the BB C paid soccer pundit Gary Lineker GBP 1.75 million in the 2019/20 financial year.2

Silo-Breaking Sports

In the coming years, the leagues, tournaments, clubs, and brands associated with the ten bigge st global sports will exert a neargov ernmental influence. To take but one example of sports’ increasing presence in politics, in January 2021, the US golfing association struck outgoing President Donald Trump a cr ushing blow by ruling out his Turnberry course as a venue for the 2022 PGA Tour.3

A further expectation is for sports organizations to spread into other sectors such as health, mobility, finance, hospitality, and travel. A s with any exponential growth, the rise and growth of dominant sports will usher in unintended consequences and complexity, just as huge global entertainment brands w ith very little internal agility have had to navigate tricky political, social, and commercial waters.

The new product and service ecosystems created by dominant sports brands will b e enticing for consumers who are already familiar with and committed to these sports. Be yond this, perks such as tickets and hospitality offerings can be wrapped into other services on a points-based system. Dedicated supporters of specific clubs will offer a strategically captive and loyal market for these new ser v ices as they are introduced. However, there are risks associated with trust some will become suspicious of the growth of dominant sports and be wary of entrusting their health, finances, or safety to them. Although

organizations might adopt a too-big-to-fail mentality, many will falter in attempting to branch out into new sectors. Those that succeed will do so on the basis of their perceived trustworthiness, reputation, and relevance to their new field.

Global Growing Pains

Sport is often said to be a universal language. The success of any sport lies in its ability to traverse cultures and enter new markets prominent examples are the rapid rise of basketball in China or the sudden appeal of baseball in Japan after the Second World War. Therefore, the strategy for growth relies on the replication of a single mass-marketable formula encompassing high brand recognition and a potent sense of heritage. But there is a narrowing scope for action as these sports try to reach increasingly disparate fans with a single big offering.

The risk to big sport’s broadening appeal is that character, culture, and charm will be sacrificed for an even more commercialized manifestation of games a tennis, soccer, or hockey match will be commercially staged in a similar way whether the venue is in Delhi or Dublin. Accordingly, the market will pivot to create new local touchpoints and in doing so, unlock new forms of revenue. As the elite segment becomes more homogenized, organizations at this elite end of the market will react by creating differentiation, increasing the numb er of touchpoints with the public and devising new forms of revenue.

Narrowcasting Niche Sports

Meanwhile, second-tier and niche sports with smaller followings and lower profile events will be able to draw condensed, captive audiences and increase their appeal through digital channels. A diverse set of localized sports institutions will be nimbler and more approachable than the behemoth companies associated with dominant sports. More over, they will be better placed to reflect local cultural, political, and social elements. Social networks will be used to accurately target and narrowcast aficionados of niche and ne wly -emerging games. While second-tier games might not command the same audience and revenue as dominant sports, they can deliver more experimental and innovative experiences and products such as more targeted Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) approaches with own streaming platforms. Beyond this, lower-profile games can be more radic al in how they address social, environmental, and political issues, bringing them to the center of the popular consciousness with mobilizing digital platforms.

The use of social media and digital platforms will be instrumental in publicizing and popularizing sports of a narrower influence, enabling them to spark a devoted following within niche segments. But these will pale in significance and attention in comparison to dominant sports. These small-scale sports will spread quickly but will be short-lived and more susceptible to cultural trends. They will emerge suddenly, pique the interest and fervor of many, then lose their lustre. This short duration will b e attributed to a lack of financial clout and to the fast-moving nature of social trends.

SOURCES

1 World Atlas (2021): The most popular spor t s in the world

2 The Guardian (2020): Gary Lineker agrees £400,000 BBC pay cut and to tweet more caref ully

3

Financial Times (2021): PGA dumps Trump golf course as tournament venue

Technologies such as holographic broadcasting offer new in-stadium experiences. What kind of atmosphere and commercial opportunities would local communities create by following virtual replications of live tennis matches?

IMMERSIVE PUBLIC VIEWING II.

The first Hainan Women’s Masters tennis tournament (also known as the BlackGroove Open) was scheduled to begin on June 15th 2038. The latest entrant to the ranks of grand slam tournaments, the competition marked an audacious leap forwards in broadcasting, with technologists labelling it a key milestone in the arrival of the post-screen era.

BlackGroove had grown in the last decade from a scrappy tech startup in Shenzhen to a global behemoth, thanks largely to its social media platform ClickClack. Its recent foray into 360-degree camera hardware made it the perfect partner to roll out an immersive new way of watching tennis.

An affordable and tiny hovering hologram drone the ClackDrone enabled people to beam in live on-court action into 4D scenarios. After mapping the size of an area, the ClackDrone would then levitate and project a 4D image of the court, players, and action onto the built environment. New immersive audio of the games emanated from a tiny sp eaker housed in the base of the device.

Due to evironmental concerns, international fans were less willing to travel to big spor t s events, making traditional screen formats ripe for disruption. The event itself was attended only by a cadre of global elites who were able to pay the premium entry fee prices started at CNY 6.4 million who were then treated to the very pinnacle of sports hospitality.

For the masses without the financial clout to attend in person, technology provided an equiv alent experience. The opportunity for BlackGroove was clear use the Hainan Masters as a means of showcasing their new technology. Eventually, ClackDrone would come to replace screens as the preferred medium to view sports.

It worked. Millions of tennis fans under lockdown in global megacities used the ClackDrone to project 4D tennis matches onto their dining tables, watching action figure-sized tennis pros duke it out over three or five sets. Tennis fans also came together in local clubs and public courts all over the world to watch as the world’s number 1 and number 4 seeded players competed in the final live before their very eyes. The atmosphere in such places was electric the vividness of the live hologram action channeled the live experience of the sport into distributed venues full of audiences enraptured by the real time action.

The wide distribution of the ClackDrone was the key to the success of the initiative and the tournament final smashed records for viewing figures. But more importantly, it paved the way for the projection of other sporting events globally, re-injecting an aspect of conviviality into big tournaments in the pandemic age. As 18-year-old tennis wunderkind Chynna Ling lifted the cup for women’s singles, presented to her by BlackGroove CE O Zhang Yu, the world of broadcasting changed forever.

Physical Exclusivity, Virtual Masses

In 2014, Japan set out a strategy to drastically increase the number of tourists to its shores ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.1 The aspiration was to make leisure travel a major source of economic growth for the country, with a target of 20 million visitors per year by the time the Games came to town. But the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that same year saw the competition called off and deferred to the following year.

The case of Tokyo 2020 offers a glimpse into the obstacles that major sports tournaments face in a post-pandemic landscape. The notion of millions of international travelers flocking to a single city pack ing into bars, restaurants, hotels, buses, and trains is likely to become unthinkable. It also shows that in the future, sports events will be hostage to new ecological, economic, social, and public health considerations. Even if the long term-predictions on in-stadium attendence differ among experts, there might be fewer spectators at big sports events and it will most likely cost more to attend. New media formats will make viewing sport more engaging and thrilling to watch in remote settings and new re venue streams will emerge from subscription and pay-per-view services that use AR, VR, or hologram images.

Big Sports Events Remain Relevant

Although they are likely to be scaled back in live settings, major sporting events will continue to be a vital component of global society, just as top athletes will continue to dream of competing at the highest level and with the greatest degree of public visibility. Broadcasters will rely on the zeal and dazzling ability of the s e athletes to attract audiences to their networks. The coming together in support of an athlete or team will continue to serve as a way to bring individuals together when social ties become weaker and the loneliness epidemic continues apace. Meanwhile, there will be a set of key differentiating factors dividing physical events from virtual consumption. Consider the retail sector as an analogy: digital shopping is about efficiency and the discovery of the full product range, but physical retail is about delight and social interaction. The same will apply in sport: virtual viewing will provide stats, overlaid information, replays, and gambling. At in-venue events, production teams will bring next-generation experiential techniques to amplify joy, memorability, and spectacle (and fans present will demand such an experience after paying a premium to be there). For example, new media formats will be implemented in stadiums, creating a better experience through AR and VR , in-stadium gamification, and personalized statistics. This will transform venues to arenas in which diverse events across various sports formats can be hosted.

Events Won’t Be the Same

As cited above, major sporting events will face new obstacles and constraints in the face of wider global circumstances. The fight against the emerging climate emergency will mean events must be less costly to the environment and even contribute to ecological causes. An example could be a pop-up sports event where the stadium site is cleared following the competition and re-wilded afterwards. Meanwhile, the CO₂ produced when pe ople mig rate en masse to huge sporting events must in some way be offset with new green initiatives.

While the coronavirus pandemic might be beaten in the coming years with the rapid rollout of a vaccine, the illness will fundamentally alter our social mores and how it fe els to be with others. In live sports settings, the gathering of crowds will be subject to new rules. Social distancing measures and smaller capacity venues might not become a universal standard around the world, but some of these regulations will be required periodically at specific locations.

Thes e constraints will have knock-on effects for leagues, clubs, and sponsors. With fewer people actually attending events and fewer ticket sales, prices for attending will increase. Leagues and clubs will have to work harder to attract sponsors and offer more in the way of commercial entry points in-game. The major consequence of this is that attending games will become the preserve of the affluent. With oversubscribed events, tickets will b e awarded not just to those who can afford them, but to those whose online purchasing history points to a likelihood of high spending at the stadium.

Virtual Replication of Live Sport

Media formats have helped us to experience the electricity of the stadium since the invention of the wireless. But new technologies will better replicate the excitement of major sporting events in the future. For the majority of

people, sport is something that is consumed on TV either at home or at a bar with friends. But these rituals will evolve as the next generation of immersive technologies is rolled out. Progress in virtual, augmented, and mixed reality is continuing apace with evidence pointing to more funding and research dedic ated to it during the COVID-19 era. Meanwhile, hologrammatic projections could soon see major international sporting events beamed into local courts, clubs, and venues. Consider technology that allows some twenty spectators into a local soccer ground to witness a live hologram of Real Madrid vs Barcelona superimposed on the pitch. Or in confined spaces, a world heavyweight bout played out on a home platform the size of your coffee table. A new sector might emerge which makes viewing sports on screen seem as antiquated as reading a match report in the following day's newspaper.

SOURCE

1 Travel Weekly (2014): Japan outlines plan to achieve 20m tourists by 2020 Olympics

Data analytics will pervade player recruitment, training methods, and game tactics. Could a scout be building a new ice hockey dynasty by globally selecting the most gifted players from remote through AI?

III.

WORLDWIDE ALGORITHMIC SCOUTING

Donald Ridgeway might have been the most inventive talent scout of his generation. In the five years leading up to the 2035 season, he led a total re-build of struggling Canadian Hockey League team Mont-Frémir. After a calamitous campaign in 2029, the president of the club ordered a total strategic re-think, enlisting the help of the renowned talent consultant and team-builder.

Ridge w ay had a nose for good players, but crucially, he was an early proponent of Ice Scouter. This ecosystem of connected hockey equipment provided a “God’s eye view” of amateur and professional hockey performance in real time globally. Hockey sticks, skates, helmets, shirts, and even socks were fitted with sensors that collected performance statistics and fed them back to scouting professionals who accessed information via an AI assistant app called Puck. The recent consumer launch of this equipment had cre ated a data deluge. Whether a game was occurring at the IIHF World Championships in ice hockey or among friends on a frozen patch of ice on the outskirts of Helsinki, the exertion of athletes created a data trail. It was that trail that Ridgeway was determined to follow to build an era-defining team for Mont-Frémir.

Meanwhile, outside the Siberian city of Yakutsk in Russia, a young hockey hopeful was giving his new set of IceScouterconnected equipment a field (or rather frozen lake) test. Antinko Smirnov was the talismanic player of his local youth team and was tippe d for a high achieving future in professional ice hockey. Recognizing the young teen’s speed, skill, and dexterity, his father and coach bought the full IceScouter equipment

package. In the following months, the young athlete had built a formidable data profile. Every toe drag, forehand-to-backhand, and hockey stop was recorded, tracked, and analyzed. In subsequent years, parental pressure group s around the world lobbied for increased regulation on how IceScouter tracked and used the data of their sons and daughters. But in the early 2030s, policy still lagged behind innovation.

While many talent scouts were slow to innovate and use the IceScouter to anticipate the emergence of promising players, Ridgeway was different. He would spend hours reviewing player data sent through by Puck and r unning anticipatory programs to see which combination of emerging players would provide an unparalleled configuration of talent.

The Canadi an s cout was at his home in Quebec when he received an alert that Smirnov ’s player stats were about to show signs of a significant upsurge in ability. The genius of IceScouter and the Puck interface was that it did not show great players it re cognized the moment when mediocre players were about to become exceptional.

It was clear that the young Russian forward player was the missing piece in the team Ridge w ay has been assigned to build. The scout wasted no time in flying to Yakutsk to meet the Smirnov family and discuss their son’s relocation to Mont-Frémir. The parties signed the contracts and it was agreed that Antinko Smirnov would join the Quebecois ice hockey youth team.

Algorithms as  Differentiation by Humans Commodity,

Ridgeway often remarked that one of the most rewarding parts of his job was when he was able to predict the emerging talents of an entire team and watch them grow together during a number of years. The sudden rise of Mont-Frémir following the 2035 season might have been the most pronounced case study for Ridgeway’s capabilities. Using anticipatory technology, he was able to lay the found ation for an ice hockey dynasty that would recast the team as a major force in the sport for generations to come.

AI is enabling humanity to determine meaning from large data sets. Previously unseen patterns are forming from online shopping to weather forecasts the same will b e seen in sport. Data analysis will be the basis to even competition on a professional level, enabling coaches to make game-winning decisions. Consider how the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team uses geolocation data to determine its defensive strategies when it is pitching.1 It al so uses AI to draw up training programs that are unique to each player. But those turned off by the idea of a sports team managed by bots need not worry. Future sports management w ill be conducted by analysts bringing experience and intuition to bear in the same way as before, but the difference will be in their use of AI and big data to win matches.

The use of such technologies holds the key to unlocking the potential of athletes working in concert with each other. It will also have applications in scouting, transfers, and training. But there will also be limitations and adjustment setbacks. Already, zealous technologists eager to bring new sports tech to the fore are rubbing up against regulators in leagues and governing bodies. For example, big-data company InStat provides sports te ams w ith analytics for soccer, basketball,

and hockey. Individual players have a full universe of their match performance so that they are able to isolate areas of improvement. As this data multiplies, it will become a commodity in sport in the same way as it is in retail, marketing, and advertising. Owners of information monetize it by enabling partners to sell more products. In sport, owning more data means winning more matches. Accordingly, new issues around data privacy as well as a ne w bartering data market will emerge, in which clubs will sell data pertaining to the player on offer to a new club during player transfers.

Sports Data Analytics as Commodity

Data will become a central pillar to sports competition as instrumental as training and game strategy. The fastest to adopt new insight tools will pull ahead of the pack in the early stages of the technology’s implementation. In fact, such technologies are already instr umental in the success of various teams and players. F1 is an example of an early adopter. More than just a race around a track, F1 is a competition to collect the most data. The Mercedes AMG F1 W08 EQ Power+, used by Williams F1, reportedly collects over 300 GB of data during a single race weekend.2

Sports that have a significant degree of complexity and variable outcomes such as team games that have a high number of players and tactical variations will re ap the greatest benefit. Such innovations will also assist with scouting, if we consider the potential of technology that can analyze a young rugby player’s gait and physique to evaluate their performance as they reach peak playing age. Like wise, software that runs models of an individual ice hockey player’s decision-making pro cess on the rink would feed into the makeup of another team.

The effe c tiveness of big data and AI comes from the technology’s ability to spot patterns too random or infrequent to be observed by humans. With the chinks in oppo-

sitions’ armor exposed, managers will be able to adopt new in-game strategies that provide them with a competitive edge. As this new technique is used and refined, the data set will become more extensive, making the process of analysis more effective and sharper. Exp ect wealthy sports teams to plough funds and resources into developing new AI and data strategy divisions to run before and during games. Matches will no longer be won on cour t s, fields, or rinks, but by teams of analysts and coaches huddled in data centers adjoining the locker room.

Sp or ts betting is another area in which algorithms will make automated real time predictions. Even though entertainment has been a crucial driver for the human appetite to gamble, algorithms will increasingly bet large sums based on self-learning models. Super computers might make betting decisions autonomously, trying to exploit minimal statistical fluctuations of odds. Private and institutional g amblers are likely to defy bookmakers in a neck-and-neck race for slight algorithmic advantages. Similar to high frequency trading in the financial industry, new commercial and legal challenges will arise due to this new form of automated sports betting. Sport betting platform are likely to face tougher regulations on issues such as identity verification and manipulation monitoring.

Limitations of Sports Analytics

New technologies usher in unintended consequences and sometimes fall short of the gre at expectations placed upon them. Data analytics and AI in sport will be no different. Evidence suggests that the major risk is that any recommendations made by emerging systems will be based on historical information, me aning that any forecast will be predetermined by previous results. This may prove to be a significant stumbling block for predictive sports. The key to mitigating these setbacks will be in accumulating not just big data, but good data: information that is telling, effective, and provides clues to seemingly unexplainable occurrences in sport.

Perhaps the most complex consequence of the rollout of analytics tools will be in the ownership of data. By analogy with the rise of the information economy in big tech where the commercial entities that own the most, earn the most, the same will be the case in sport as a new era emerges where teams with the most information filter up to the top of the league tables. More data equals better results. Teams will barter, exchange, and pay inordinate sums of money for player statistics. Future transfers will include entire personal data sets from a specific players’ history as the y come through youth training and into the professional sphere. These interactions will be bound up into the heavily commercialized ecosystem of elite sports. Meanwhile, the minutiae of players’ lives how they are sleeping, how their endurance is building or declining will be come fair game for some teams. Expect a pushback from athletes on just how much their employers should be allowed to know about them, along with a call for clear regulations.

Human Intuition as a Match-Winning Factor

While the elite sports category erupts into a technological arms race for which club, team or athlete can bring the latest analysis technology to bear, the human factor will become a differentiating aspect. Those with intuitive abilities and emotional intelligence will be highly sought after.

Advances in mental health research and neuroscience will unlock the ability to build teams and athletes that are psychologically robust. Such competitors will draw on deep wells of inner stamina to win points where they count most. Meanwhile, in team building, human interactions will still be of paramount importance, with trust, self-confidence, and positive thinking cultivated within teams and organizations. The worst managers and strategists will become overly reliant on analysis from big data and AI, which will inhibit their ability to introduce unpredictable divergent decisions into games in order to confound or foil their adversaries.

SOURCES

1 Forbes (2020): The AI Lords of Sports: How The SportsTech Is Chang ing Business World

2 TIBCO (2018): How Does Data Drive a Formula One World Champion?

The notion of what counts as sport is constantly evolving. But will there ever be a demand for competitions between autonomous machines? And if so, who will be the stars of the future —  artificially intelligent robots or the human developers who code, engineer, and optimize?

AUTONOMOUS ROBOTIC COMPETITIONS IV.

Colossus 2.0 vs Aggressor 9 was arguably the most climatic final bout ever witnessed in the Unmanned Mech Battle Championship’s (UMBC) 25-year history. The two robotic combatants, each weighing a ton and standing eight feet high, fought in the air and on the ground in the Mech Arena a purpose-built outdoor arena on the outskirts of Johannesburg. After four hours of blistering combat with s words, rail guns, and projectiles, Aggressor 9’s recently updated melee strategy software gained the upper hand. While team coders were working tirelessly in the dugout, technicians came out with a master stroke parrying an offensive rush from Colossus 2.0, Aggressor 9 was able to inflict an incapacitating blow, sending the stricken bot spiraling downwards. The unit blew up on impact.

The victory cemented Team Aggressor, the technicians behind the winning mech, as the most successful side ever to participate in the UMBC. The team was headed up by Adola Okafor, a 19-year old Nigerian coding prodigy who earned her AI stripes writing programs for backstreet mech bouts in Lagos in the mid-2040s.

While global spectators of the UMBC had grown year-on-year since the first yearly championship in 2030, Africa was leading in terms of talent and fan base. The public appetite to watch the action unfold live had been fe d by the publicity surrounding the construction of the new Mech Arena which was the first to encompass engineering designs for the UMBC. The events themselves were marketing bonanzas and the bots were designed in collaboration with big technology comp anies keen to display their technical muscle to the world.

The structure contained all the maintenance and engineering facilities necessary to ke ep titans in competition form. As well, it comprised a huge cleanup division, where automated drones would be deployed from the stadium walls after competitions to magnetically collect the metal and carbon fiber detritus from fallen robots.

The UMBC w a s the single most observed sport for its time, and Okafor was one of the most popular cultural figures. But she eschewed the many definitions applied to her by pundits was she a technologist? A scientist? A robot coach? Or a sportswoman? “The answer is yes to all,” Okafor told an audience at a global leadership summit shortly after her first title win with Team Aggressor.

While many were glued to the spectacle of two giant robots engaged in flying electro-jet-fueled hand-to-hand combat, true proponents knew that matches weren’t won with tougher hardware, but with smarter software and AI that was able to anticipate the opponent. Online forums were abuzz before competitions discussing the finer points of which AI was likely to have the edge in the fight.

The UMBC drew criticism from the pro-AI movement that argued that facilitating a competition which pitted two sentient machine s against one another was in violation of the newly-promulgated UN Charter of Robot Rights. The case was eventually argued in the International Court of Justice where thirteen of fifteen judges ruled that the UMBC was not in violation of the Robot Rights Charter. With a mandate to continue, the competition went from strength to strength, blurring the lines between sport, technology, and entertainment.

Robotic Spectacles, Humans in Control

Esports has emerged as the one of the fastest-growing industries in the last decade and the number of people watching is set to climb. While in 2019, 454 million people regularly watched gaming competitions in 2019, this number is expected to grow to 646 million by 2023.1 Considering that spectator numbers stood at 335 million in 2017, the industry is on track to double its fan base in the course of six years no mean achie vement.

But what’s next? The esports industry’s rapid growth will create opportunities and challenges for the wider sports market. Leaders will face difficult questions and trade-offs when it come s to esport’s relationship with traditional sport. But while many will scratch their heads and wonder whether virtual and digital games actually constitute sport, a bold new market will come of age and the games themselves will change. Expect the emergence of AI in esports, where autonomous systems battle for supremacy in virtual competitions, or large-scale performances where sentient machines test their mettle against one another. In this uncanny landscape engineers, programmers and even machine s themselves will be come the preeminent sports celebrities.

Esports Taken to New Heights

As the ground base of Generation Alpha, born between 2010 and 2024, increases in number (2.5 million are born every week ) they will join with the highly populous Generations Z and Y to form a colossal captive audience for esports.2

While the sheer number of proponents will drive the industry forwards, esports will be supported by a highly complex digital infrastructure that allows thousands to compete in open world games. Rapid advances in sto rage space, bandwidth, and processing power will facilitate this global movement. The ever-present threat of another modern pandemic will hamper the ability of spectators to gather at mega events as before. This fact w ill also emerge as an accelerating force in the move to virtualization. Meanwhile, the environmental impact of huge-scale sports events will be off-putting to generations who are conscious of the ongoing threats to our environment. Stay-at-home competitions will become the accepted way of participating. The potential here is that gaming might live up to one of the central (and hitherto unfulfilled) promises of web 2.0, in that gamers coming together in concert might create deeper ties in our global but increasingly fragmented society.

The meteoric rise of esports is attributed in part to gaming’s increased prevalence in p opular culture. Rapper Drake joined gamer Ninja in a livestream on gaming platform Twitch. Basketball player Michael Jordan and a raft of other A-listers have invested in the industry, leading gaming into a mainstream cultural activity. As esports become a major interest, a new form of sport-meets-technology venture takes root among the die-hard digerati.

A Shift Towards AI-Based Competitions

In common parlance, references to esports will, in the coming years, likely drop the “e” prefix as gaming is absorbed into the mainstream sports landscape. The debate will move on to the next generation of electronic, digital, and virtual competitions such as drone racing. This will be propelled forward by the rise of AI and next-generation bots in gaming. In virtual competitions, heats will be pre- programmed across gaming platforms. The smartest and strategically deft AI scientists and their programs will prevail. Meanwhile, other competitions will ensue in the sphere of hardw are. Machines themselves will face off against one another in an array of newly-designed sports after being fine-tuned by technicians. By this time, AI will have arrived into mainstream society and will have b e come an integral pillar of retail, healthcare, and mobility. However, strict rules will govern human participation. Amending and tampering with machines in-game will be forbidden.

The Emergence of a New Type of Athlete

But while the new category sees AI vs AI in both virtual and mechanical sports, the human struggle will still be paramount. Traditional sports are won with skill, muscle memory, and athleticism, and athletes that are capable of consistently delivering these performances are the most successful. AI sports will be won with adept coding, engineering, and programming under pressure. There w ill b e individual, team events, and open-source competitions that encompass thousands of players who strategize and compete en masse.

Cel ebrated coders will become selfsustaining me dia nodes that livestream and carry out play-alongs with tips to hordes of adoring online fans. These teams and players will have the same sort of notoriety that esports players enjoy today. Meanwhile, the

spectacle of robotic athletes putting their software and hardware to the test in feats of engineering and endurance will draw fervent new spectators: consider the potential of MIT’s humanoid robot Atlas applied to the specifics of extreme sports or endurance contests. These new players will have significant so cial standing and, as those at the forefront of new advances in AI, will weigh in on the public debate about AI and its applications, such as AI in public spaces, or the ethical questions of using it to wage war or educate children.

A New Sports Segment in the Clutches of Big Tech

The natural foundations for this new sports category will be the research from three key areas. Big tech companies Apple, Google, Alibaba, Amazon, and Facebook science research foundations Stanford, MIT Media Lab, Oxford Saïd, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology as well as government agencies such as DARPA.

For big technology companies, AI-based sport will be a fertile ground for recruiting the young talent set to revolutionize the technology industry. Leaders from such companies will use AI-based sports as a means of showcasing and testing new advanced AI research pro duc ts and programs. Meanwhile, these will become effective marketing arms that corporations can use to manage their reputations. But the scale and pace of advancement garnered in the competition’s sphere will invoke the ire of some. Predictive algorithms de veloped in the course of AI-sports competitions will be ripe for misuse.

SOURCES

1 Insider Intelligence (2021): Esports Ecosystem Report 2021: The key industry companies and trends growing the esports market which is on track to surpass $1.5B by 2023

2 McCrindle (2021): Generation Alpha Understanding our children and helping them thrive, a consultancy estimates

Sport has the potential to tackle the societal and environmental challenges of the future. Can a public institution use polo to bring education, development, and inclusivity to marginalized communities?

V.CIVILIAN SPORTS SERVICE

In the 2030s, a new initiative was rolled out by an association of European nation states that placed sports participation in the front and center of a broad initiative to tackle some of society’s most urgent and complex problems. It was concluded that the formation of a new supranational department the Civilian Sports Service (CSS) would be crucial to ensuring a long-term decline in crime, delinquenc y, obesity, lifestyle disease, and mental illness. In some countries, all secondary school graduates spent a mandatory year working in the CSS. This took considerable strain off national governments, contributed to a feeling of collectiveness and enhanced quality of life even as some railed against the institutionalization of the CSS as the state eroding personal freedoms.

A plethora of sports were funded and turned into participatory programs that were rolled out across the bloc. Five-a-side soccer and basketball were both prioritized because of their easy implementation into densely packed inner city areas. But an array of niche sports also saw an uptick in engagement. One of these surprised many onlookers polo.

Follow ing reports of polo’s societyenhancing credentials in deprived areas of South America, officials in Brussels decided to apply the principle to countries in Europe. Tax subsidies and financial incentives were granted to those who wanted to open stables, rear horses, or teach polo. A growing body of research from anthrozoologists showed evidence that the psychological benefits of spor t s was multiplied when games included caring for animals.

From 2032 to 2036, polo clubs were set up in inner city areas and taught in schools from Portugal to Poland. By 2040, polo was second only to soccer in its level of public participation, with the equestrian sport opened to cohorts in lower income brackets. While the game used to be the preserve of royalty, aristocracy, and business tycoons, fields were now populated with people from other walks of life. Nurses played with construction workers. Bus drivers became youth coaches and university professors participated as animal caretakers. The rise of the sport contributed to a boom in jobs and was also a rallying cry for conservation, with greenfield sites marked out as a habitat for retired polo ponies. Officials beamed as data was collected on polo’s social impact. The CSS attributed the playing of polo as a major alleviating force against many of society’s ills. Between 2040 and 2050, incidents of violent crime decreased markedly. Obesity was down, along with suicide rates. Meanwhile, polo was used as a means of empowering young girls across Europe mixed teams reinforced the principle of gender parity in children and young people.

The C SS was a key driver and testing bed for new technologies. The effort to transform infrastructure and city planning to encompass polo pitches and stables was considerable, but using data analytics and modeling, urbanist s were able to restructure towns to make these destinations more accessible. Meanwhile, a year spent in the CSS was vital in helping many young people into employment. During these stints, their behavior and strengths were profiled and fed back to them, helping them determine their future career trajectories.

The sport of kings proved to be the greatest driver of equality in the subsequent decades.

Next Level Relevance, New Fields for Social Innovation

Broadly speaking, sport is perceived as a force for good. But new insights are emerging with regards to the ethical, ecological, health, and social implications of how sport is played, performed, and orchestrated. It is likely that the positives of sport tend to be exaggerated, while its negatives are generally downplayed. Consequently, in the coming years, a stronger focus on values will gather pace. We could see the emergence of new ombudsmen, regulators, and monitors set up to keep a watchful eye on the sector’s practices. Regulatory bodies such as these would introduce measures such as environmental fair play that would bring excessive, planet-imperiling practices to heel such as a league that would penalize athletes and teams for poor sustainability records. Governments and elected officials would be pivotal in ensuring that professional sports teams take the broader implications of their activities more seriously. On the other side, sports organizations and athletes will also adapt proactively to social norms to increase their reach and appeal to a broader fan ba s e. In the future, competitions would be designed to favor the team that contributes the most to social good.

This will also create new opportunities for new social innovations that would significantly scale sports participation and, in turn, spor t’s potential to improve life in cities and rural areas. A new platform could be established within nations a civilian sports ser-

vice that would bring the power and resources of the state to bear in encouraging, facilitating, and supporting sport and exercise.

Stronger Value Orientation, New Restrictions

Initiatives like the one described above can only be implemented once better knowledge is obtained about the real-world, substantiate d and irrefutable facts of how sports whether grassroots participation or elite spe ctating change the world we live in. It is a field of contrast. Running daily and playing team sports improves aerobic health, but damages joints. Social media encourages health-obsessed communities, but has dangers associated with mental health and body image. Sp ort can foster social and ethnic mixing, but can also result in discrimination and the prop agation of gender stereotypes. The picture is complicated, but health insights from tracking apps grouped with a greater depth of study on sports social impact will be a necessary starting point.

It is likely that as sport’s negative impacts become better understood, more public pressure will be applied to curtail the growth of activities that are deemed dangerous or unhealthy if practiced to excess. Marathons or endurance running events could be slapped with new restrictions intended to deincentiv ize organizers. Or athletes could be expected to pay more for life insurance, with providers refusing to cough up for injuries earned on the field.

Meanwhile, a backlash against the online cult of wellness will ensue. With fitness influencers and trainers hawking new workout and nutrition plans on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, parents, and health officials will take steps to curtail their influence, fearing the rising tide of mental malaise associated with attaining the perfect physique.

These issues are likely to usher in a period of newly minted restrictions and regulations that will instigate a stronger focus on ethical, ecological, health, and social requirements in sports based on strong value orientations. Some of these will interfere with the macro trend of commercialization that has shaped the sports sector in recent decades. In fact, some of these regulations will be wrapped into existing rules of conduct for teams and athletes. For instance, financial fair play in top flight soccer theoretically prevents teams with inordinate resources to essentially pay to win. In the future, teams will have to abide by the rule of environmental fair play limiting their C O₂ emissions, as well as their consumption of water and other resources. Public pressure and national policies will strong-arm federations into making games not only more sustainable, but also safer, for example through new rules regarding helmet safety in American football or ice hockey. Expect a redistribution of wealth as, in a long overdue measure, fees for female athletes rise to meet those of male competitors.

As sport’s role in the betterment of society becomes a point of major importance culturally, more attention will be placed on the conduct of athletes, organizations, teams, and brands. Until recently, it was acceptable despite the blatant inherent contradiction in doing so for tobacco companies to sponsor sports events. In the years to come, more stringency will be applied to companies involved in betting, alcohol, soft drinks, fast food, and other activities that are seen as being detrimental to human well-being. Meanwhile, we will look to athletes more than ever to act as role models and ambassadors, meaning that they will be forced to take a position re g arding social and environmental issues. The border between athlete and social ambassador becomes harder to distinguish. Fans will always admire athletes who succeed and are seen to be the best. But increasingly, those who take a stand for a specific cause or mar-

ginalized community will become the most influential. As more people than ever feel the effects of climate change, those who champion sustainability crusades will see their popularity skyrocket.

Diversity of Value Frameworks

In recent years, many mistook globalization for an inexorable force. But today we know that some of its aspects are in recession. Globalization as a trend may fluctuate, and at some points, we may enter into periods of de-globalization. This means that the reforms listed above will happen at different speeds around the world, creating new areas of tension. The question of fairness in sport is one that is likely to be troublesome for regulators. If, for example, one country’s sport federation recognizes transgender athletes as women, permitting trans competitors to participate in female contests, and another does not. The yawning divide in the rate at which countries introduce or accelerate social innovation through sport is likely to create some headlines in the future. These systems might even diverge due to different value orientations.

New Space for Social Innovation

But while the pace of change will differ across markets, there will be a unanimous new attitudinal shift: that sport and the ethical, environmental, health, and social considerations embe dde d within it offer myriad opportunities for social innovators. Put simply: we will get b e tter at using sport to improve peoples’ lives. A key prediction here is the emergence of a “social license”, meaning a new community contract which is entered into by athletes, clubs, leagues, and federations. This social license will decree that sport must assume responsibility for basic human principles and work to safeguard them often at the expense of the bottom line. This means in turn that grand projects and initiatives will be more likely to be approved. If a major soccer club were seeking to regenerate a down-atheel area of a city, having such a license in place would hold it accountable for its actions therein.

In the coming years, we will better understand the duality of popular spectator sports such as professional soccer, tennis, and basketball, along with mass participation sports like personal and corporate fitness activities. Crucially, we will have a better grasp of how each impacts society for the better: the former promotes ethical, environmental, and social ideals. The latter is used in a grassroots format to incite practical changes in the lifestyles of participants.

A consolidation of the fragmented sports media market might take place in the future. What would the emergence of a global super media platform mean for spectators, athletes, sports organizations, and sponsors?

THE SPORTIFY DISRUPTION

It began as a conversation in a college dorm room. Three friends studying engineering at an American elite university in 2035 rankled at the price of sports subscriptions and payper-view deals. Sports broadcasting, they decided, needed its disruptive moment. The student s resolved to create an open-source broadcasting network that would disrupt the highly commercialized sports media market offering fixtures across major events for a small monthly fee.

After some work, the beta version of Sportify was born. At first the founders were able to procure rights to second-tier sports only. Competitions in table tennis, softball, darts, and sailing were unable to draw the interest of the big-league media channels and advertisers made for low-hanging fruit for the startup. The engineers applied the principles of innovation to make these games more captivating for audiences. The universitysponsored media lab developed new overlaid metrics, social mechanics, and VR experiences that put the audience in the perspective of the athletes. These new techniques elevated such sports into the mainstream. Advertising revenue, investors, and sponsorship money began to flow in.

While women's sports continued to grow, there was still a lot of untapped potential. This was a perfect situation for Sportify. The company took a stand, and ploughed investment into bringing more female athletes and comp etitions to the fore. The firm intro-

duce d ne w education programs in schools and youth camps intended to empower young girls. A mentorship initiative followed where seasoned female athletes nurtured young talent. Sportify also established a new womenonly athletes union that campaigned for equal pay with men. Furthermore, Sportify also had an emphasis on rising sports economies in Africa and Asia.

Crucial to the growth was an understanding of the gaming market. Cloning features pioneered in the 2020s broadcasting network Twitch, Sportify put influencers and creators in control of their own shows. A new dynamic market for punditry opened up with athletes, musicians, artists, and tastemakers presenting edited concept shows that remixed content and presented it to avaricious new sports consumers. Lifestyle and consumer brands rushed in with big budget campaigns that attracted billions of views.

In 2038 Sportify a privately held startup company was valued at USD 1.4 billion, establishing it as the first technology unicorn company in the sports sector. Five years after, it was floated on the stock exchange at USD 40 billion, smashing records previously set by meteoric tech companies.

But the reinvention of the category had a ways to go. Following its floatation, the company rolled out Sportify Live, sounding the death knell for traditional sports broadcasting. SL was designed to launch a myriad of new competitions to rival those already on the market. Using its deep reserves of cash and consumer insight, Sportify drew audiences away from established leagues and swallowe d up the revenue along with it. With the majority of consumers already using the network to view sports, the tech company had a captive audience for its newly-minted competitions. SL used the same strategy as its parent company: start with second-tier sports and re-invent the formats. The industry barely noticed when SL launched its first native

Personalised Consumption, New Basis for Commercialization

competitions to rival existing ones. The Live Waterpolo League, Equestrian Championship, and Netball Association each garnered multiple times the viewing figures of the existing competitions, putting the latter into steady decline. The matches were designed to be more aggressive, dynamic, and sensationalized, with longer games, more points and a heightened sense of drama achieved by borrowing conventions of sports entertainment. The model worked. One by one, SL turned its attention to new sports, creating a growing monopoly for the industry.

In the 2020s, the sports media landscape is at a moment of transformation. The COVID-19 year has further accelerated digital consumption habits and viewers are keener than ever to v ie w sports on their own terms with individualized content tailored to them. The dominance of subscription and pay-per-view formats that deliver a single, one-size-fits-all experience to anyone willing to make a digital bank transfer are set to evolve as audiences desire more bang (or rather, greater personalization) for their buck.

As more v iewing options proliferate, current industry leaders and new market entrants will be able to upsell heightened experiences of live sports events. Imagine paying a premium for the privilege of seeing a boxing match from your favored combatant’s perspective. Or being able to zoom in on minute details of an American football match using a VR headset that receives an image from a camera drone. The possibilities for those obsessed with match stats are particularly fruitful. Consider an on-screen dashboard of interactive game analytics usef ul especially for those who enjoy betting. While the potential of VR might be exaggerated by zealots in

the early 2020s, there is certainly potential for the technology in coming decades. While the future of sports broadcasting might be about personalization, for many viewers it will also be about curatorship. Consider how the rise of social network TikTok has opened up opportunities for people to make highly creative films with visual effects, amassing large audiences. Snippets and game highlights will be share d, edited, recommended, and discussed in online communities. Creators are becoming the new pundits and for big tech companies, the building in of advertising revenue here presents an open goal. Beyond this, predictive algorithmic recommendation engines will enable consumers to discover more content according to their interests.

Knowing What Sports Consumers Want

The near future of sports broadcasting will be about incremental progress and a gradual return to normal. For media companies, payper- view and streaming will present fertile ground in the coming years. According to a 2020 report by Verizon Media, some twothirds of sports fans in Europe would pay for a personalized streaming service.1 Research in other markets echoes these findings. But the ecosystem of streaming and subscription services is muddled and counterintuitive. At worst, viewers must on occasion pay separate subscription fees to watch different games in a single competition.

The coming years will see broadcasters and streamers become complicit in the personal information economy a scenar io where a company’s profit, wealth, and worth are dictated by the amount of data it possesses . As media consumption becomes more personalized and attached to a user’s profile, more information can be gleaned on that user’s tastes, likes, and dislikes, making them easier prey for advertisers.

Towards a Fragmented Media Landscape

The rise of data-driven personalization will usher in more players to the sports streaming and subscription market, resulting in a crowded, fragmented landscape. While traditional media formats such as radio and television in sport involved the coming together of ma sses around the world at a single time, all experiencing a unique episode of sound and vision in one particular moment, the future is different. The most expensive pay-per-view formats are likely to price out many sports fans who will look to other means to watch sport. At the same time, the opportunity to only subscibe to what a costumer wants to see might increase the willingness to pay for such services.

Meanwhile, social media and sports will have a closer web of interdependency. The example of TikTok mentioned above is just the beginning. Viewers-turned-creators will increasingly share highlights such as goals, bloopers, accidents, and moments of notable skill remix them and then share with their own audiences. This will most likely complement the live sport experience of consumers , rather than canabalize it. Therefore, the remixing of contents will mainly ser ve to increase the reach and engagement of audiences.

Emergence of New Business Models

In the coming years, a new model of broadcasting will emerge to disrupt accepted ways of watching and consuming sports media. A focus on viewer data will lead to big tech companies and social media platforms taking a more prevalent role in the ecosystem.

This digital land grab could begin like this. A tech behemoth buys the rights to sporting events using commercial heft to outbid traditional broadcasters then offers them for free in order to entice subscribers. This has already happened to a certain degree for selected competitions and single matches in the recent past. In the future, big technology companies might acquire exclusive and comprehensive broadcasting rights for the most attractive sports events such as the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic Games. Building audiences in this way means clear commercial wins through advertising revenue. These te ch companies would present personalized sports offerings that lend themselves well to social media sharing. This user-generated content would be also broadcasted globally. Meanwhile, expect also a great consolidation of sports broadcasters to provide a one-stopshop for sports viewing. These moves, pending the right circumstances, would result in a big tech company assuming a new sports monopoly.

This phase will usher in a dynamic new market for sports media. Given how the digital sphere disrupted the music industry, a similar op en-source innovation could do the same with sports. Big tech companies or sports brands might construct their own competitions, events, or leagues to generate ad or subscription revenue. An early adopter of this approach is Red Bull’s multi-platform media company Red Bull Media House. This presents a tipping point in the influences between sports and media. While many sports

pre d ate media as we know it, these new sports formats would be designed with media (and social media) in mind. This means the rules and game parameters can be adapted to maximize entertainment effect.

The future therefore is a complicated picture. Today’s offerings, with their monolithic status, will evolve to encompass greater personalization. This will afford viewers gre ater agency in how they consume content. Such tailored content will create more dat a, highlighting significant opportunities for advertisers and white space for big tech companies.

SOURCE

1 Verizon Media (2020): Viewing Shifts: How we watch sport

Digital platforms and financial models such as tokenization will empower the athletes of the future. What if fitness champions monetized themselves independently and offered fans direct channels to merchandise, ticket sales, and live events?

VII.

TOKENIZED GIG SPORT EVENTS

In the late 2020s, pundits agreed that it was only a matter of time until fitness competitions training and exercise philosophies that bill themselves as the “sport of fitness” emerged as a major competitive sport. While early proponents experimented with the concept of a league in the latter half of the decade, it really gathered pace with the full rollout of the ExFit World Championship (EF WC ) in 2030, owned by the ExFit World Federation (EFWF).

The rise of competitive exercise athletes as new sports personalities was meteoric. As the competition attracted more interest globally, these figures became comparable with major basketball, soccer, and golf stars in both fame and wealth. Watching people sweat over barbells, engage in squats or heft a rowing machine was initially written off by many in the sports sector as not having the compelling game factors of traditional sports but the y were proven wrong. This new professional movement resulted not just in major audiences watching and participating in the fitness craze, but also sparked a new means for athletes to market and monetize themselves beyond the sphere of influence of sports federations.

The tech-savvy athletic pioneers of professional ExFit in the early 2030s innovated new blo ckchain technologies to monetize themselves. Traditionally, sports professionals earned wealth through contracts with te ams , tournament prize money, and sponsorship deals. The early proponents of pro ExFit , however, found new means of revenue generation through tokenization. In concert with this trend, a new market opened up with retail investors purchasing a fraction of value

for ExFitters’ future worth. The tokens would also grant access to merchandize, ticket sales of live fitness events, and exclusive content from the athletic community. A dynamic new digital marketplace called ExFracture was established as a one-stop shop for ExFit tokens. A g rowing profile here meant significant wealth accumulation for the sport’s top performers.

Insights into performance were gleaned from fitness trackers and muscle sensors which tracked the endurance, fatigue, and cadence of emerging ExFit competitors. It also assessed their likelihood of injury. Meanwhile, other information such as athletes’ mental profiles and emotional support networks were accounted for when assessing their present and future value. In addition, consideration was given to how adroitly they might market themselves in future ranging from their level of physical attraction to their charisma and likeability. Some investors placed their investment based solely on professionals’ ability to market specific products.

This new ecosystem enabled athletes to claim dividends. It also gave them greater autonomy to market themselves and so a new cohort of highly driven, entrepreneurial athletes emerged. ExFit professionals would hawk themselves out for public appearances or record bespoke greetings for birthdays and special occasions for a charge.

There were pitfalls to this new movement. As athletes’ value grew based not on their talent, but on how entertaining, flamboyant, and charismatic they were, many fell victim to hype cycles. These saw their value spiral upwards and then drop off shortly afterwards. Meanwhile, athletes looking to their own me ans to market, brand, and promote themselves on ExFracture frequently fell victim to burnout, media snafus, and high stress.

New Power to Athletes, Traditional Structures Under Pressure

But while athletes basked in this new era of self-reliance, federations still owned the rights to stage and promote big ExFit events. And without these spectacles and the billions of captive viewers they attracted, the appeal of the athletes would fade away. The federations wanted their cut. But the die was already cast: the blockchain ledgers used to strike tokenization contracts were impenetrable and a new age of athlete autonomy had emerged. In time, athletes from other sports followed suit, drawing most of their wealth from self-marketing activities.

Any athlete will attest to the fact that there is no success without sacrifice. It starts with the innumerable hours of honing your craft, training mind and body to reach peak competitive performance. Once there, the rampant commercialization of the sports market demands another sacrifice: that of freedom and autonomy, due to the stringent provisions of the commercial contracts that bind spor t s personalities. Sponsors, teams, and governing bodies may all have requirements that athletes must comply with in exchange for lucrative deals and fame. But what if it did not have to be this way: what if athletes had total control of themselves as assets, or as commodities even? A tipping point might be reached soon, at which the majority of athletes turns itself into products, services, and content creators. We have seen the beginning of this shift, but as the blockchain re-invents the web as we know it, athletes will leverage the DLT to create new streams of wealth for themselves. Meanwhile, the lurching structures of the old sports industry clubs , broadcasters, traditional centers of power and influence will look on in b ewilderment as their own influence fades.

In this landscape, the interdependence between athlete, team, club, and federation will tip in the individual’s favor. Imagine the potential of sports personalities not just the most famous, elite, and influential, but any professional athlete conversant with digital tools that enable them to assert themselves independently on the marketplace, who can build their own brands as platforms for various products, events, and services such as fa shion, education, or healthcare. This will unfold with the arrival of new means of crowd funding and tokenization, a scenario where individual “shares” are divvied up using the blockchain and sold to individuals who store it as a means of future worth which may either appreciate or depreciate in value. An investment here results in fractional ownership of any commo dity in the future, this could extend to talent. Imagine buying a one-thousandth coin in a young Tom Brady in his debut season for the NFL, then selling that share for a profit a s the potential of the player was discovered.

The Empowered Athlete

The most famous athletes become their own brands. This new era of empowerment will help more athletes achieve this outcome earlier on in their careers. Traditionally, only the very pinnacle of p erformers (such as Jordan) had the clout to pull in commercial collaborators to launch sub-brands. An early warning sign of more athletes being able to go it alone can be observed in the recent case of former Arsenal soccer player Mesut Özil.1 Following a split with sponsor Adidas, the German national announced a rollout of a new sports go o ds brand called M10. It is significant that Özil used Twitter as a means of publicizing his new venture at its early stage. The brand also has an esports division.

Digital platforms that enable ecommerce will provide these fledgling businesses with a means of shifting product. But it is unlikely that athletes will stop at sports or apparel. Expect a move into sectors as diverse as healthcare, education, and tourism.

Tokenization and Self-Promotion

The trends discussed above are already coming into effect in the early 2020s. But this will lead to a f urther disrupting of the power structures currently abroad in the sports sector. As audiences become more entrepreneurial and participatory in the sports market, the emergence of tokenization and digital f unding platforms will enable retail investors to become complicit and may be tur n a profit.

Finding money to launch a sporting career is tough. Talented youths come under pre ssure as parents pull back on household spending to afford kit, coaches, and training camps. In the future this might not be so. Using blockchain technology, athletes (or, specifically, their parents) could draw capital from investors. These investors would pay for a stake in the athlete’s future worth in the same way that a banking bond matures. The athlete could either buy them out, or their stake could be sold to another investor at a suitable time. This model will emerge to challenge the promotion of talents through associations and public funds. Meanwhile, another positive outcome for athletes and sport in gener al i s perceivable. Lower-tier athletes from elite sports and participants in more marginal ones will be able to use tokenization that is, fractional ownership to fund their careers. This will also enable them to host sport events without relying on partners

or federations. Ticket sales, merchandising, and all the commercial hoopla of a big event will be decentralized through tokens. The rewards for investors wishing to buy a stake in a high- jumper, water polo player, or judo combatant will be lower, but so will the risk. The challenge here will be from the attention economy it is possible that the market will ascribe more value to the most entertaining athletes, not the most talented.

A New Power Balance

These technologies and their new uses will usher in an age of athlete independence. Those b ored or frustrated with kowtowing to big leagues and federations will simply depart and form their own. A template for how this sort of thing could be achieved in the future can be observed in the Laver Cup, a tennis tournament inspired by the Ryder Cup golf competition.2 In a conce pt which was reportedly Roger Federer’s, the Laver pits six Europ ean players against six from the rest of the world. Here we see an opportunity for sportsmen and women to become architects of new competition formats, which could evolve further with new rules, equipment, and playing environments.

This marks a paradigm shift, where alternative structures are drawn up in parallel to existing sports organizations. Meanwhile, new revenue and media ecosystems will be created to commercially support these new tournaments and formats. Expect a new era of tension between empowered sports personalities who are suddenly at the helm of their ow n emerging competitive mega systems and traditional centers of power that find themselves suddenly on the back foot.

Beyond this, more tensions will arise between athletes doing it all for themselves, and the traditional actors that have historically profited from sporting activities, such as managers, bro adcasters, clubs, and federations. This too will result in a loss of relevance for b odies that would act as middlemen for the running of sport. What happens when the athlete becomes their own marketing manager, publicist, CEO, and legal consultant? The answer is revenue loss for the individuals who historically did these jobs. But self-sufficient, self-reliant, self-serving athletes could be brought to heel by having a legal framework in place. If soccer players are launching a new competition outside of federation structures, can they still fully focus on their traditional club duties? The issue is a complex one. Meanwhile, the sector for athletes is becoming more fluid, freelance, and gig-related. This creates new challenges for how pro sportsmen and sportswomen carry out their duties. New skills are required in business, self-marketing, and technology. Athletes may have to be all things to all people. Carrying this kind of load and trying to perform at the highest level might be too much even for a highly honed competitor.

SOURCES

1 Focus (2020): Vom Fußballer zum Geschäftsmann Özil baut sein Imperium: Lifestyle-Marke, Online-Store, eSport-Team

2 ATP (2021): Laver Cup: Where Team Europe Meets Team World

The technological progress in genetic, physical, and mental enhancements will trigger fundamental debates about sports, competition, and fairness. How would a franchise of human enhancement games impact the attitude of the broader public?

VIII. HUMAN ENHANCEMENT GAMES

The 2037 Human Enhancement Games (HEG) was the first installment of a new kind of sports franchise. Following the structural template of the Olympic Games, the event gathered crowds in colossal stadiums for ceremonies, pageantry, and competition-related rituals. Teams assembled by state-backed research and technology companies competed in the f ull range of track and field events. But there was a catch that made this event different from all grand-scale competitions that had pre ceded: there were no regulations. While the presence of doping and performance enhancing procedures had been ro oted out of sport almost altogether, the organizers of the HEG had decreed that here, there would be no such rules. Athletes were permitted to freely use any means of chemical enhancements from anabolic steroids to amphetamines. Biotechnological body hacks were also permitted, with competitors drawing on the many cutting-edge breakthroughs in biological science. Beyond this, cybernetic augmentations were used by some athletes and the HEG saw the first use of biomechatronic limbs. The only regulations were very loose and only aimed at preventing “clear and obvious harm” to athletes’ physical safety.

The result was a bonanza of broken records. The first person in history to run a mile in under a minute did so in a heat at the HEG. Crowds gasped as swimmers cut through pool lanes at speeds of 20 mph. The US team deployed a team of swimmers who had been injected with biotech blood cells, providing them with increased stamina. France meanwhile, fielded a set of athletes with carbon fiber fins instead of arms and legs. Javier Sotomayor might have held the high jump record for three decades after leaping 2.45 m in 1993. But his record was broken threefold by all of the twelve participating athletes in the HEG high jump competition.

But did these records count? Opinion was divided in the sports industry and in much of the world. Human Enhanced competitions remained a niche phenomenon compared to the revenues and spectatorship of the traditional glob al sports ecosystem. Increasingly, a decoupling occurred in the landscape between those who were pro-enhancement and those who were against it. While fans and the scientific community cooed at the advances in robotics, medicine, and biotech that innovations at the HEG illustrated, it rang alarm b ells for others. NGOs and human rights groups joined in a collective global effort to sanction the HEG, lobbying to tighten regulations while some detractors wished to see it banned altogether. The organizers of the competition were forced to make sub st antial investments into security when sabotage and protest plans were unearthed in the run-up to the first tournament. While the feats of science and human endurance amazed spectators, the goings-on behind the scenes were murky indeed. The HEG was owned by a consortium of big pharma companies and health-tech behemoths. The comp etition served as a no-holds-barred test bed for human experimentation, with fully consenting subjects. The dangers associated with the procedures that athletes undertook to edge above their adversaries were clear no fewer than eight athletes were hospitalized during the 16 days of competition.

Multidimensional   Optimization, Redefinition of Fairness

But those in favor of the games proclaimed it a great leap forward for the fields of technology and science. There was also evidence that such research and testing would usher in broader changes to the mass market.

This was proven to be true in the years following, as the biomechatronic limbs provided to amputees saw great improvements in sensitivity and dexterity. The swimming tech pioneered by Team France saved lives on the high seas as rescue teams were equipped with detachable, modular, artificial fin-limbs. The innovation in pain relief for endurance runners also helped the medical community ease discomfort for those with chronic illnesses.

The sporting world is on the cusp of a new debate concerning human enhancement and fair play. As surgical technological and biological techniques become available to athletes who want to get more performance from their joints, muscles, and even their brain functions, new means of policing these procedures will b e put in place. But looking at history, many sports would not exist if it were not for humanity’s quest to reach ever further towards the limits of human endurance. In road cycling , for example, during the dawning age of the bicycle in the late 1800s, proponents staged ever longer, more trying races to test the inventions’ limits. The struggle of pedaling with wooden wheels and metal tires was mitigated with a heavy use of amphetamines, alcohol, cocaine, and even ether-soaked handkerchiefs.1 Such questionable techniques were phased out and then banned altogether. Looking to the future, a similar moment of tension can be expected as early proponents of physical enhancements introduce such technologies into the bodies of athletes.

As b efore, new sports formats will emerge from this movement and a decoupling will occur, with enhanced sports on one

side and natural, unenhanced sports on the other. In the interim, a broad range of new technologies and procedures are emerging similar to already existing laser eye surgeries and hip replacements. These interventions will make it increasingly difficult to draw a clear line between permissible enhancements and unauthorized advantages. The opportunity for the health sector, big tech behemoths, and the pharmaceuticals industry is clear: enhanced sport will provide a test bed for new ways to prevent injury, increase performance, or alleviate pain. But how popular will the sphere of enhanced sport become as a mass phenomenon? Due to opposing political and societal forces, but also because of a lack of identification and approval by spectators, human enhancement will remain a niche from a global mass market perspective.

Faster, Higher, and Stronger Through Technology

In the coming 10 years, genetic, physical, and mental enhancements will optimize the performances and capabilities of individual athletes. Those that are fast to adopt these will quietly pull ahe ad of competitors. Consider the fact that many advancements are being made in the sphere of para sports already, notably with 3D printing that might enable designers to iterate prosthetics in competition. Me anwhile, research in gene-doping that could one day produce a superhuman runner is also ongoing. These kinds of genetic enhancements are particularly difficult to police, given that they will leave no chemical trace in the competitor’s system.

The commercial opportunity of new technologies and techniques such as these will not be lost on investors and venture capitalists. Expect the rise of a new industry that uses sport to test new therapies, treatments, and hardware which it can then push out to the consumer market. This movement will have a murky and blurred distinction in the wider sports market, as illegal enhancements become indistinguishable from standard training methods. Consider the question of laser eye surgery for golfers, or a double hip replacement that helps revive an ailing tennis player into his or her prime. In this scenario, it becomes complex and resource-intensive for governing bodies to create coherent and binding rules espe cially on an international scale. High-tech sports such as F1 already provide a glimpse on how the future of other sports may look.

Next Generation of Enhanced Sports Formats

With the onset of this new raft of human enhancement, a split will develop between athletes, managers, coaches, brands, and institutions that are for enhancement in sport and tho s e that are against it. As a result, those who are at the forefront of this new movement will draw on its emerging appeal to create new tournaments and competitions which explore new frontiers of human endurance and ability. These competitions might involve dubious moral practices and stretch contemporary ethical boundaries. As with any new leap of technological faith, there will be challenges and opportunities. The innovation is driven by competition and will create bold leaps forward in the realms of research and development. The commercial bonanza consider the ticket sales, media ecosystems, and marketing potential of a whole new set of entrants to the sports market is another. A major challenge will be overcoming the un-

intended consequences of human enhancements as well as the health risks of physiological experimentation. Unsurprisingly, there will b e no small number of ethical concerns.

Human Enhancements as a Niche Phenomenon

While some argue that removing regulations on performance enhancements will make competitions fairer, there is a problem with the mass adoption of extreme human enhancements like brain implants and genetic reprogramming: no one likes a cheater. The implementation of these kinds of technologies into the mainstream sporting consciousness requires a considerable leap from audience attitudes in the 2020s. The effort to stamp out doping is still applauded by most sports fans. That said, extreme enhancements will carve out a niche within the broader market. There will be a global difference, with democ ratic and liberal societies more cautious about such advancements and the less liberal and more totalitarian states having fewer checks and balances in how they implement human enhancements. The notion of natural competition between athletes means that many spectators do not want to see strongly human enhanced competitions, simply because there is a lack of identification betwe en spectators and athletes.

The real transformative potential of human enhancements will not be felt in a sports se ctor resistant to change, but in consumer societies where piloted research banned in competitions is rolled out to fulfil a host of new capabilities such as in work, education, healthcare, and civil society.

SOURCE

1 Foreign Policy

The legendary race's long history of thugs, drugs, and cheating

(2015): Scandal on the tour de France

Urban planning will need to address needs for exercise and physical activity in densely populated environments. How will future cities encourage their inhabitants to engage in an active and healthy lifestyle?

IX. FITNESS BY URBAN DESIGN

The city-state of Albaril was founded on an artificial island in the Persian Gulf in the late 2020s, marking the start of an audacious experiment in architecture, urbanism, and engineering. The hexagonal “pop-up nation” boa sted exquisite beaches with human-made grasslands and marshes along its coastlines as well as a finely-constructed inner city at its center. But it emerged in 2035 that residents of the shimmering new city-state were falling victim to many of the problems faced by urban residents worldwide.

Some 76 percent of Albaril’s inhabitants were sedentary information employees working mainly in offices in a culture of targetoriented professions that meant long hours and high-stress situations. While the outlying areas of the city-state were perfect for exercise, most citizens were staying in the city center. Depression was up, obesity was soaring and in 2028, suicide statistics showed an incre ase on the previous year as well. The president, Aaadil Nahif, had to take charge of the situation.

Nahif set about transforming the city into a sport-centric urban gym. His “sportscape project” saw the urban fabric scattered with micro-fitness zones that enabled citizens to interrupt their days with high-intensity workouts, strengthening or movement training. Walking for ten minutes in any direction from the city center would bring inhabitants into contact with a plethora of different exercise opportunities parkour courses, cycling tracks, climbing walls, and lidos. An inclusive culture of wellness followed where the local government staged impromptu yoga, Pilates, and meditation classes in public spaces. Free of charge, passers-by could stop for a quick

downward-facing dog. Bus stops were fitted with smart chin-up bars that used a digital display to encourage people into action. Subway platforms offered exercise bikes to waiting commuters.

But not ever yone was thrilled. The government had played fast and loose with building laws to weave sport, exercise, and wellness into the urban fabric. In some cases, home and business owners had been forcibly ejected or paid off in order to make space for the new sportscape project.

When the government rolled out a new holistic health app to incentivize citizens to use more of the facilities, many thought it was a good idea. Some were at first happy to relinquish some of their private information to adhere to the AI assistant app’s goal-setting mechanic. AlbarilFit doled out a virtual currency in exchange for physical exertion. Citizens could use this tender to offset household bills, buy organic superfoods (unhealthy snacks were barred), or pay for gym memberships. But those unable to hit their quota of exercise had to pay spot fines through the app.

Unwittingly, Nahif had set the stage for a protest movement in response to his measures to improve life in Albaril. Disgruntled citizens banded together and staged so-called “gorge-a-thons” at sportscape locations. People barred access to the equipment by sitting in the way whilst eating fatty foods. Then a cadre of hackers infiltrated AlbarilFit and rewrote the code so that its virtual currency could b e sp ent only on cigarettes and chocolate bars.

Despite these setbacks, the sportscape was a success. By 2031, residents were healthier, happier, and had longer life expectancies. The episode served as an example to urbanists that building health into the urban environment is a good idea, as long as there is no erosion of free will and liberal values.

Everyday Life as the New Sports Environment, Adaption of Infrastructure

Bill Bowerman, co-founder of sportswear giant Nike is credited with saying, “If you have a b o dy, you are an athlete.”1 The ide a that sport includes anyone with the ability to move is taking root in wider society since the beginning of the 21st century with an upsurge in people working out and playing team sports. But in the coming years, how is this trend likely to evolve? The answer is that sport will converge into peoples’ daily lives in a way that makes it more spontaneous, inclusive, and entertaining.

This shift will be facilitated by digital transformation, with more services intended to increase sports participation. Sporty, for instance, is a social network that introduces people to others nearby who share an interest in activities like tennis, soccer, and golf. It forges links between people in the same way as a dating app creating “matches” in more than one sense. Cities and local governments will also have a part to play in removing the organizational barriers to sports participation. The rise of urban swimming in European cities do esn’t just result in happier, healthier people, but also in cleaner waterways. Then, there is the recent blurring of exercise and

entertainment observable in innovations such as Oculus VR’s recent fitness tracker Oculus Move. Gaming emerging as a strenuously physical activity will be a departure from its traditional place as a stationary activity. The benefits of nudging the population into exercising more are only just beginning to be understood. Many of these shifts will come as governments and national health providers adopt the approach of solving health issues upstream. Exercise is part of the ideology that assumes disease is easier (and less expensive) to prevent than cure.

A further integration of exercise into our lives could also be driven by employers. As anyone who has ever taken an office yoga session knows, promoting physical and mental exercise at work makes colleagues more energetic, content, and kind. While some might be reluctant to join, incentives, rewards, perks, and even cash could help change their minds. Skipping an afternoon at the office for billable time by sweating it out at a spin class could also be enticing. The ubiquitous exercise trend will be perceived most obviously in the built environment. Public spaces could be designed and configured to include opportunities for quick and convenient exercise. Shopping, commuting, or waiting for a bus would all contain moments for people to pass the time with a few reps, chin-ups, or vaults (in the sense of parkour). An early example of this can be observed on Japanese commuter trains, where passengers travelling to work use an app called “TRAIN”ing. The service suggests workouts based on where users are alighting and detraining and nudges them into activities like chin-ups on handles usually reserved for stability.

A challenge to this kind of innovation is inclusivity. Any invention in this sphere must provide usability for the elderly, disabled, and children it would be a waste indeed if these initiatives helped hone the bodies of people already committed to the gym. Liability issues will also be an area of risk.

Integrating Sports Into Healthcare

Healthcare is expensive, and the price of keeping society in good health is rising. Meanwhile, an aging population will suffer from an array of lifestyle diseases that must be mitigated and managed. Obesity is also becoming more prevalent in young people. Exercise will at a state level emerge as a low-cost way to keep the numbers of people in intensive care down and hospital beds available. While the presence of nagging technologies that count steps and calories are counter-productive,2 initiators that emphasize the wellbeing and communal aspect of sports will have greater efficacy. Inclusivity is key in this regard. Intersport, a sportswear retailer, tapped into this spirit to sell products in March 2021 with its campaign, “You Never Sport Alone”, highlighting that even in lockdown, sport is a shared, supportive, and communal experience.3

This would re volutionize the system of care currently in place in advanced economies. Physical exercise activities will be systematically institutionalized in the healthcare sy stem and prescribed by physicians who would keep tabs on their patients’ cardiovascular health through wearables. The state could b e come complicit in incentivizing individuals with tax cuts or perks for positive, proactive physical activity. The opportunities are obvious on a macro scale better health, longer lifespans, enhanced quality of life but on an individual level, things become more complicated. The state stepping in as arbiter of our personal health might unsettle some. And as health becomes more digitized, questions will be asked regarding data ownership and use. The COVID-19 pandemic has exp osed the debate between free will and autonomy on one side and state control and public health on another.

A Productive Mind in a Healthy Body

Perhaps the answer to these questions lies in an area where people are resigned to do not as they wish, but as they are requested. Consider the workplace as a key setting for this new era of ubiquitou s fitness to be introduced. Big health institutions might work in concer t with big employers in any sector from media to manufacturing to leverage their influence over workers and make them fitter or healthier. In some settings, this trend is already afoot, as business owners attribute their interest in an employee’s wellbeing to its correlation with productivity, intelligence quotient, and mental wellbeing. Besides anecdotal evidence to the effect that exercise makes us happier, many studies have proven it. Research by Oxford University and British Telecom found that happy workers are 13 percent more productive.4

Thus, a fitter employee is usually one that can collaborate well with others and respond better to pressure. This is particularly true when long hours sp ent at desks results in a sedentary lifestyle the effe cts of which are notably hard to reverse. Nevertheless, there is opportunity in encouraging physical activity through sport as paid work time or including fitness infrastructure in office complexes. Not everyone will be on board. Some will not take kindly to an employer poking their nose into diets or activity levels.

Longevity Architecture and Daily Micro-Exercising

Perhaps the biggest opportunity to alter habits to propagate more exercise in a nonauthoritarian, empathetic way is to use design principles to instigate change. Consider the notion of a walkable city as the first tentative step towards urbanism that engages inhabitants in exercise with a degree of subtlety. More could be done: workout stations that encourage gentle but spontaneous movements in locations where people would other-

wise be sitting. Entire city populations could be encouraged to hack their shopping trips or social engagements with bursts of micro exercise. Nudge and game mechanics would be deployed to divert individuals’ attention away from the effort and toward the goal.

The key target audience of these measures would be the elderly. Micro-exercise space s in retirement homes and communities would be instrumental in enhancing quality of life. D esigners are already experimenting with interiors that improve cardio, such a s treadmills that extend from chairs as easy removable modules or shelves that require pressure to open. Similarly, cognitive exercises can be integrated into the living environment to improve mental fitness and motoric skills.

SOURCES

1 Nike (2021): Our Mission

2 Harvard Health Publishing (2017): Activity trackers: Can they really help you get fit?

3 Intersport (2021): Latest campaign from Intersport proves that “You never sport alone”

4 University of Oxford (2019): Happy workers are 13 % more productive

GUIDELINES FOR BUSINESS, POLITICS, AND SOCIETY

Adapting to Change

A great transformation is afoot, with old certainties being challenged. For instance, sport is moving from the track, field, or pitch int o v irtual settings, and the sphere of competitive athletic pursuits is making greater contributions to science and medicine than at any previous point in history. In the future, the notion of what constitutes sport might even include competitive formats based on AI. But not all innovations live up to their hype. The potential of sport to sensitize the public to environmental concerns is still unexploited, as is the systematic and quantifi able use of sport within public healthcare systems.

So can sport contribute on the long term to improving society beyond the current tipping p oint? Absolutely. Sport is always at the forefront of political and social issues. The activities of athletes are watched closely by millions, while the behavioral cues, trends , and attitudes expressed by these deified figures are emulated throughout the world.

When it comes to an ability to touch peoples’ lives and create change for the better, the brave new side of sport has immeasurable potential. In its rich diversity of forms, sport provides a unique environment to trial the forces that push civilization forwards. Technological innovations are pioneered here. Societal norms are challenged here. Environmental policies are tested here too. All this is introduced, discussed, and piloted in a playful and competitive format that encourages debate and exchange.

As explored in this publication, sport is anticipated to pervade more aspects of daily life in societies of the future. Healthy, high-functioning civilizations will be those that successfully integrate sport into urban planning, virtual lives, and within the planning of national healthcare systems. But also, countries and regions that are on the cusp of developing economically can leverage sport to better the lives of their citizens. Touchpoints between professional athletes and consumers will proliferate, encouraging participation among the populace. In the op ening quarter of the 2020s, the diverse functions of sport can be strengthened and facilitated by the initiatives of public institutions, associations, sports organizations, the scientific community, grassroots movements, and athletes themselves. As there are various approaches to unleashing the potential of brave new sport, it will be impossible to draw a comprehensive list of strategies. However, the following five key areas of action represent a starting point to facilitate the development of new networks and competencies that will collaboratively shape the brave ne w side of sport in the 21st century.

Taking Part in the Future of Sports

The biggest danger to sport’s future as an edifying force for civilization is a lack of participation. It is imperative to inspire individuals to take part.

Dynamic new sports formats are coming to the fore, making exercising more enticing with game mechanics, quantified results, and social elements. Esports and mi xe d reality formats such as virtual cycling competitions are two obvious places to start.

Another are a of action is the design of our cities: urban planners and architects could integrate physical activities more strongly into cityscapes, for example by providing infrastructure that promotes physical activity, such as various exercise facilities at bus stops or in parks.

A key driving factor is also the rise of fan power in spectator sports. New participatory elements are expected to be used to generate engagement in events. If sports enthusiasts get a vote on where a tournament is hosted, or on which new rules are introduced, it is likely that they will feel more invested in the outcome.

All of the above will help solve the conundrum of enticing more of the population into sporting pursuits. Ultimately, this is about more than just infrastructure. A stronger integration of sport into daily life is the objective: This includes providing incentives, enabling work/life balance, and establishing social norms in broader society.

Evolution of Formats and Structures

All major sports are the product of generations of evolution. Rule amendment s , new technology roll-outs, and structural changes happen slowly. As sports belong to the community, conventions must be preserved collectively. A balance must be struck between preserving the true nature of a competition and progressive ideas that pus h sp orts forward. Furthermore, sport formats need to become economically, ecologically, and socially sustainable.

How can this equilibrium be achieved? One way is to introduce new rule changes, staging formats or regulatory frameworks gradually, with checks and balances in place. Then there is the brave and the bold of technical innovations. Better equipment, playing surface s and controlled environments all serve to make sport more entertaining and watchable, while mitigating the element of chance and laying bare the talent of athletes. Furthermore, environmental factors will become a major challenge for many sports. Conse quences of climate change, such as rising average temperatures. need to be addressed by adapting the very structure of most formats. This includes the fundamental revision of locations, event hosting, schedules, and a reduction of emissions by professional and amateur sports.

III.

Resilience of Sports Ecosystems

Even if sports formats and organizations will be developed towards economic, ecological, and so cial sustainability, their ecosystems need to become more resilient in dealing with immediate threats. As more of the world becomes digitized, there are more vulnerable p oints of entry for cyber attackers. Therefore, building resilience into sport’s future ecosystems will be pivotal. It st ar ts with investment. Right holders such as governing bodies and federations must concern themselves with pre-solving the i ssue of technological resilience as they build and rely increasingly upon their digital architecture. As data becomes more imp or tant to the running of wealthy clubs, they could become ransomware’s next big hunting ground. Despite all the digital measures to ensure cyber security, risk starts with humans. Training programs on security and secrecy will become best practice for the le aders and employees of major sports clubs, brands, and federations, but also for amateur athletes.

Resilience is not just about having the wherewithal to repel digital attacks. The COVID-19 year has proven how suddenly external events can interrupt the smooth running of the sports sector. Accordingly, a set of tools to deal w ith these eventualities has tremendous potential: hosting virtual competitions or ensuring social distancing in stadiums in the case of recurring outbreaks.

IV.

Ethical Guidelines for Medical Advancements and Personal Data

As technology and science solve old problems, they create new ones. In sport, the principle is no different. Progress and leaps in these areas can pose problems when it comes to ethics. What will constitute safe and socially desirable use of innovation in the field of human enhancement, precision medicine, virtualization, and data analytics?

One answer to this complex issue lies in the drawing up of a framework for the use of new physical, mental, and technological means to perform better. Fairness will continue to be the ideal that industries work towards, but a new era of debate will emerge to challenge notions around equality and fair play. Meanwhile, the quality of these discussions will suffer if they are conducted behind closed doors. A series of referendums or public consultations ought to be launched when it comes to developing a consensus on fair play. Such debates will fall under the jurisdiction of domestic and international laws. Here, it will be necessary for groups of nations to assemble to draw up accords on the legality of advancement.

Using sport to its full potential will hinge on humanity’s ability to have constructive debates to these ends . A definition of ethical standards will gain traction an idea that will be particularly pertinent to professional athletes, recreational enthusiasts, in public sports infrastructure, and the healthcare system.

V.Towards a New Narrative

For many, exercise and team games are regarded as a leisure activity that is little more than a distraction from the affairs of the day a means of escapism that appeals to our innate desire for playfulness. While some argue that escapism is exactly what makes sport so powerful and special, this attitude sells the transformative potential of sport in society dismayingly short.

The cultural narrative surrounding sport needs to be extended in the media, entertainment, and through public discourse from a ssociations with physicality, self-image, competition, and playfulness towards sport’s role as an enabler for social mobility, health, equality, and gender parity.

The promotion of the brave new world of sport will encourage the market to devise new initiatives that pragmatically approach such issues through funding, activism, mobilization, and awareness building. Assembling div ide d societies through an appreciation of sport, for instance, is a simple way of doing this. Using the visibility of major tournaments to raise awareness or encourage people to rally to a specific cause, is another.

This also means that the overlap of sport and politics will become more pronounced. Sport has always be en and alway s will be political. D efining and achieving a new equilibrium between sport and politics will become a major area of action for the future.

All to Play For

The potential of sports to shape change and foster societal progress has never been more evident. Sport is a product of society, mirroring it in its complexity and myriad interconnections. But in the future, it will become the tail that wags the dog society will look to sport to enable and pioneer both individual and social progress. To create a truly desirable future, sport must reinvent itself according to new ethical guidelines when it comes to data privacy, medical advancements, the use of AI, and the promotion of economical, ecological, and social sustainability.

A fo c us on the brave new potential of sport promotes the acceptance and benefits of social innovation that extends well beyond fans and athletes, generating an imp ac t on almost everyone. The game is afoot, and for leaders in business, policymaking, and society there is all to play for.

5 Appendix

W.I.R.E.

Curating the Future

W.I.R.E. is an independent think tank that curates the shaping of the future at the intersection between science and practice, based on the systematic early recognition of relevant developments and on translating them into long-term strategies and fields of action for private and public organizations and their decision-makers.

As an interdisciplinary platform, W.I.R.E. has distinguished itself through its comprehensive understanding of the economy and society and uses this knowledge to de velop long-term decision-making bases, ideas, and new approaches to solutions. The thematic expertise of W.I.R.E. focuses on the wider consequences of digital transformation and on linking market and societal innovation in sectors ranging from health and financial services to real estate and media.

W.I.R.E.’s competence includes a multidimensional information architecture as a basis for tailor-made multimedia publications, event formats, exhibitions, and keynotes. In the tradition of alchemy, the think tank develops tangible concepts in the form of “real-life labs” or prototypes for the 21st century. Besides an international network of thought leaders and decision-makers, W.I.R.E. also b enefits from its numerous partnerships with leading companies, universities, and designers.

Established in year 7 of the 21st century www.thewire.ch

INFRONT

Shaping

the Future of Sports

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, Infront is a global leader in shaping the future of sports as one of the true unifying forces in the world. It evolves both established and emerging spectator and participation sports. It engages and attracts fans and participants across the world and across channels. It boosts reach, revenues, and customer value through its expert team, innovative services, and solutions.

Around 1,000 experts working from 44 offices across 17 countries ensure that Infront is equipped to offer everything an event or commercial partner needs to be successful be it innovative digital solutions, worldclass event operations, international media rights distribution, sponsorship sales and activations, or cutting-edge media production.

No other in the industry can equal Infront's experience when it comes to serving international sports federations its contractual relationships are among the longest in the industry.

Ever y day Infront is connecting fans and consumers to the greatest sports events by delivering unmatched event experiences, creating easy access to engaging content and building inclusive communities.

www.infront.sport

AUTHORS AND ILLUSTRATOR

Raphael von Thiessen Senior Project Lead

A senior project lead and researcher at W.I.R.E., Raphael analyses the impact of trends and technologies on the economy, science, and society. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Zurich, he launched digital innovations for the media company Axel Springer. He went on to complete an MBA prog ram at ESCP Europe in London, Paris, and Berlin. After a stint as a management consultant focusing on the future of work, he has joined W.I.R.E to manage strategy projects and publications. His first books, “Decoding Artificial Intelligence” and “True Transformers”, examined the future of AI and the financial service system.

Simone Achermann Co-Founder and Chief Editor

Simone Achermann looks at developments and trends in society, business, and cultural sciences. She is the author and editor of a variety of publications, including the ABSTRAKT book series, “Mind the Future compendium for contemporary trends” and the Suhrkamp series “What counts”. Before taking up her role at W.I.R.E. she worked for several years as a communications consultant, focusing on the area of corporate social responsibility and writing texts and speeches for top managers in business and social fields. Simone Achermann studied cultural sciences at the University College London (UCL).

Peter Firth Editor

A journalist with over a decade's experience working between think tanks and major news publications, Peter’s wr iting for W.I.R.E. examines global affairs, business, technology, and society. Formerly news editor with global media brand Monocle, Peter headed up its daily output and commissioned across the company’s flagship magaz ine and weekly papers. Prior to that Peter worked at business think tank The Future Laboratory, running a research team designed to analyse how consumer behaviours translate to market opportunities for some of the world’s biggest brands. Peter studied English Literature and Sociology at the University of Brighton and to ok a p ostgraduate diploma at the London School of Journalism.

Dr. Stephan Sigrist Founder & Director

Stephan Sigrist is the founder and director of the think tank W.I.R.E. He has been analyzing interdisciplinary developments in economy, science, and society for years, fo cusing in particular on the consequences of digitization in the life sciences, financial services, media, infrastructure, and mobility. Editor of the ABSTRAKT book series, author of numerous publications and a frequently invited keynote speaker at international conferences, Stephan supports decision-makers with W.I.R.E.’s early detection of relevant developments and the corresponding translation into long-term strategies and innovation proje cts.

Andrew Archer Illustrator

Andrew Archer is an illustrator and art director from New Zealand and currently resides in Melbourne, Australia. Inspired by pop culture, fashion, surrealism, wood block pr ints, and his time spent in Asia, his work is a self-asserting mix of hallucinogenic color and rhythmic line. He has experience in illustrations for major sports brands such as Adidas, ESPN, Formula E, Jordan, Nike, and Red Bull Racing.

CONTRIBUTORS

Philippe Blatter President & CEO Infront Group

Philippe Blatter has held the position of President & CEO of Infront since 2005. In 2015, Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group acquired Infront and appointed Philippe Blatter as Vice-Chairman Wanda Sports Group, consisting of Infront, the iconic triathlon brand IRONMAN, and Wanda Sports China. He was credited by SPONSORs Germany’s leading sports business magazine as one of the Top 10 “Most Influential People in International Sport” in 2012 and in 2017, he was included in ESPN FC's “Football’s 50 most influential people”. Prior to joining Infront, Philippe spent 11 years at McKinsey & Company. As a partner, he founded the company’s Sports Practice. He also served as a board member of the non-profit organisation Right To Play Switzerland for more than 10 years. Philippe holds a Master of Science degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) and an MBA degree from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, USA.

Dr. Christian Müller

CEO Infront X

As CEO of Infront X, Infront’s digital arm, Christian Müller contributes his vast knowledge of innovative solutions, virtual technology, and digital strategies to empower brands to connect with customers and drive revenue. Having been with Infront since 2006, Christian previously held roles as Senior Vice President, People, Innovation & Corporate Services and as Vice President Business Development, providing valuable support for Infront’s business units. Prior to Infront, Christian gained expertise as a project manager for McKinsey & Company, advising leading international corporations and sports organisations. Christian has a PhD in technical chemistry and a master’s degree in chemical engineering, both from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Jörg Polzer VP Strategic Communications Infront Group

Overseeing Infront’s global communications and brand strategy, Jörg is a seasoned marketing communication specialist with almost 20 years of international experience and an in-depth understanding of international spor t s and entertainment business, events, media, and sponsorship. Previously he served as Vice President Sports for the leading global information and measurement company Nielsen, and as Global Head of Corporate Communications at the Swiss luxury watch brand IWC Schaffhausen. Before joining IWC, Jörg spent ten years in various positions at Infront, most recently as Director Corporate Communications. He started his career in Munich with the global PR firm Ketchum and the German media company SPORT1. Jörg holds a diploma in Ger man Studies and Communication Science from the University of Bamberg as well as an Executive Master’s degree in Communication Management from the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano (EMScom).

EXPERTS INTERVIEWED

Adam Savage

TV, YouTube and Esports Presenter

Alejandro Agag

Chairman at Formula E Holdings

Dr. Allen Hershkowitz

Chairman of Sport and Sustainability International

Amikam Kranz

VP, Media Sales & Operations, Infront Group

Angus Campbell

Architect of Sports Stadiums at Foster + Partners

Antoaneta Angelova-Krasteva

Director for Inno vation, International Cooperation and Sport at the European Commission

Dr. Bob Rotella

Author and Consulting Sports Psychologist

Christoph Heimes

Former CEO of IX.co

David Cipullo

Former VP Brands 360, Infront Group

David Dellea

Sports Business Advisory Director at PwC

Hans-Peter Zurbrügg

SVP Personal & Corporate Fitness, Infront Group

Prof. Dr. Kevin Warwick

Cybernetics Professor at Coventry University

Lucie Greene

Author, Big Tech Expert and Futurologist

Dr. May El Khalil

Founder of Beirut Marathon

© 2021 W.I.R.E. thewire.ch

Produced in collaboration between the W.I.R.E. think tank and Infront Group

CONCEPT W.I.R.E.

CONTENT Raphael von Thiessen, Simone Achermann, Peter Firth, Stefan Pabst, Dr. Stephan Sigrist

INFRONT CONTRIBUTORS Philippe Blatter, Dr. Christian Müller, Jörg Polzer

DESIGN W.I.R.E.

ILLUSTRATIONS Andrew Archer

COPY EDITING Die Orthografen GmbH

PUBLISHING ADVISORY Jonathan Earl

PRINT NeidhartSchön AG

NUMBER OF COPIES 4,000

PUBLICATION 2021

This work is protected by copyright. All rights reserved, in particular, those of translation, reprinting, presentation, excerpting illustrations and tables, radio transmission, microfilming or duplication by other means and storage in data processing systems, whether in whole or in part. Reproduction of this work or parts of this work, even in individual cases, is only permitted within the limits of the le gal provisions of the Copyright Act in the currently valid version, and is always subject to remuneration. Violations are subject to the penal provisions of copyright law.

This W.I.R.E. publication is published in German and English.

Di s claimer: The contents of this publication re pres ent the views of the W.I.R.E. think tank and therefore do not necessarily reflect the positions or views of Infront Group. Thi s publication i s for informational purposes only and seeks to establish an open dialogue about the future of sports and the role of sports within s ocie ty.

ISBN: 978-3-907291-64-1

www.nzz-libro.ch

NZZ Libro an imprint of Schwabe Verlagsgruppe AG

REIMAGINING SPORT

The W.I.R.E. think tank and Infront have joined forces to research and cocreate a forward­thinking publication that explores the co­evolution of sport, technology, economy, and society over the next decades. The objective is to trigger a broad dialogue within and outside the industry about the future of sport, as we believe that reimagining sport from a fresh perspective will help unlock new benefits of sport for our society in the 21st century and beyond.

Sport has always prepared people for their life challenges through playful competition. Today, the sports landscape is embedded in a context of unprecedented change: rising health care costs, technological disruptions, and climate change pose existential risks for society, economy, and environment. Can sport empower humanity to tackle some of the biggest issues of our time?

The answer might be yes — because the world of sports is also at a tipping point. Algorithms will replace human decision­making processes both on center stage and behind the scenes. The rise of new markets will reshape how sports are organized, financed, and performed. And athletes will increasingly use virtual platforms to act more independently than ever.

Brave New Sport indicates that the next generation of participation and spectator sports has the transformative potential to lead the way into the future and to empower 21st century society. This involves not only integrating sport into the public infrastructure or sensitizing audiences for sustainability, but also redefining how humans interact with autonomous machines.