Back in 1997, artificial intelligence and robotics experts in Japan came up with an intriguing challenge. Could anyone, they asked, build a humanoid football team capable of beating the World Cup winners by the middle of the 21st century? It sounded more than a little out there. In truth, it still does. Yet when it comes to forecasting the future of sport, it serves as a useful lodestar. Before we know it the outlandish will become the new normal.
Why am I so confident? Well, over the past few days I’ve been speaking to experts about how sport may look in 2050. And given that I recently wrote about how accurate – or not – predictions made at the dawn of the millennium turned out to be, I felt it was only fair to put my money where my mouth is too.
So what can we expect when we wake up in the first week of January 2050? “Predicting 25 years into the future is a fool’s game,” says Lewis Wiltshire, whose job as senior vice-president of digital at IMG involves assessing how technology will transform sport. “But by the middle part of the century, our bodies will interact with tech in ways that are still quite space age to us today.”
This includes having chips in our brains to directly interact with sports technology. “Neural implants, or so-called brain computer interfaces, will be pretty common by 2050,” says Wiltshire. “And one consequence will be the greater detection of potential injuries to athletes before they happen.”
So don’t be surprised if Tom Brady and Jimmy Anderson, who played high-level sport into their 40s, are no longer outliers. In fact Wiltshire believes we might even see more professionals playing into their 50s.
What about the match-day experience? Wiltshire reckons that, before long, more of us will have wearables, such as virtual reality headsets, that will place us inside a team’s ground while we sit on our sofas. “I live half an hour from the Spurs stadium, but I’m equally passionate about the San Francisco 49ers,” he says. “But in 25 years’ time, for someone like me, it won’t necessarily be any easier for me to get to Spurs than it will be to get to Levi’s Stadium. Because I could do one of those remotely.”
Wiltshire believes when we talk about matches on WhatsApp, our friendship groups will also include AI virtual companions. “Our current negative viewpoint of bots will change,” he says. “These companions will get to know our deepest anxieties and biggest hopes and aspirations, and they will talk in a way that feels completely normal to us.”
What of sports themselves? First of all, do not be surprised if the International Olympic Committee decides to stage the summer Olympics every two years by 2050. Economically it makes sense, especially given many Olympic sports struggle for eyeballs and sponsorship between Games. The interest from countries with deep pockets to stage the Games, such as India, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, means there is no shortage of suitors either.
A related point: the gap between the very big sports and the rest will continue to grow. “Some sports, such as athletics will be OK,” one senior executive of a major sports brand told me. “But even in swimming and gymnastics a lot of athletes are feeding off scraps. While the top volleyball and handball players in Europe are lucky to get five-figure deals.”
What about the future of collision and combat sports? At the grassroots levels, many are seeing fewer participants amid concern over brain injuries. However, at the elite level Dr Ross Tucker, a science and research consultant for World Rugby, believes that technology will continue to help player welfare and keep the sports going. “I think the main contact sports will be OK, because they’ll find a new equilibrium where the risk is known and accepted by people playing it.”
Yet I still wonder if some sports will have to fundamentally change. What happens, for instance, if a fighter has a chip in their brain that immediately registers a concussion? Surely it would mean a bout would have to be stopped when it happened?
It is also worth listening to the former Olympic silver medallist and sports marketing expert Alan Pascoe, who was especially prescient when it came to predicting the future of sport in 1999. “Soccer will get stronger and stronger,” was one of his insights in the Sunday Telegraph. “The rest of sport is fighting for a restricted amount of money and exposure and, when you struggle to keep a profile, then there is a downward spiral in terms of sponsorship and everything.”
So what does Pascoe expect to happen over the next 25 years? “Sport on TV will become even more popular,” he says. “But contact sports are going to come even more under the microscope. While, in terms of participation, padel will possibly take over from tennis.”
Interestingly, Pascoe also believes that football could experience a downturn because the public are “getting more and more fed up with uber-rich players that have no loyalty to anybody”.
Meanwhile, he has a wider concern too. “Unless we do far more to get kids active in primary schools, by promoting physical literacy, we are going to have a massively overweight population that the NHS just cannot cope with by 2050,” he says. “It’s a hugely serious problem – and it’s completely under-recognised.”
What of our robot football players? Well, there is now a Robocup Humanoid League, where autonomous robots play against each other. True, judging by the footage, Argentina will not be quaking in their boots yet. But give it 25 years and who knows what will happen?
