Swifter, higher, stronger is the mantra of most sports professionals and with the Australian AFL and NRL football grand finals behind us, it’s a great time to ponder on what sport may look like and hold for us in the near future and in a series of media interviews this week that’s what I set out to do.

I’m always drawn to George Orwell’s quote “serious sport is war without the bullets” and when you look at the time, energy and money spent by devoted fans and those that run and benefit from it, I think it still holds up.

But where is professional sports headed?

Firstly every bit of research I can find says that recreational, amateur and professional sports are here to stay and on the increase, but as with everything it’s all getting a future twist on it, so what can we expect?

The Athletes

Tomorrow’s professional athletes, unlike their counterparts of a few decades ago, will continue to be full-time career athletes, training full-time mentally and physically, but added to this historical duo, is the newest kid on the block digitally.

This starts with a whole raft of wearable devices that monitor, record and analyse every action, intake and, expenditure that the athlete makes throughout their day, their training and their playing.

This new raft of limitless raw real-time athlete specific data, is being monitored by techknowledgy that’s constantly scrubbing every morsel of information out of it, comparing it to past activities and other players performances in attempt to gauge future performance and interventions and training that can be put into place now to achieve optimum outcomes later.

We can expect to see an average of 9 of these devices on-board every athlete in the next few years, some of them worn, but most of them built-in to the clothing, shoes and other apparel with each device sending their unique performance perspective to the athletes ecosystem of advisers, coaches and health professionals and even the fans themselves.

But wait there’s more, as all this information meets virtual reality allowing athletes to put on a virtual headset and whenever and wherever they are jump onto a virtual field, experience past games, trial virtual game scenarios or play against virtual opponents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgHl6GF_6Kw

But it not just technology that improving, so is the human body and our understanding of it as everyday we learn more about how the  human body and the mind and come ever closer to discovering answers to why some people are better athletes than others, why some train better and how our bodies perform best and recover fastest and the answers to these and a myriad of questions are starting to find their way back into our athlete training regimes and on to the fields.

And while we’re looking ahead, how about using genetic coding to find potential great athletes and even breeding them in the womb to become tomorrow’s sporting superstars?

The Fans

Getting up close and personal with the action has never been more possible than it is now and in the future it will only get better.

Live omni-channel coverage will continue to find its way onto all of our devices and we will be able to readily switch from one to the other, wherever and whenever.

Technology will also make experiencing the action from a players perspective totally ordinary as you get to not only see and experience the  action but also feel it just like the athlete does. This haptic technology comes through a vest you put on that lets you feel, in real-time, the on ground tackle, sense the player tension and feel the game from a players perceptive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=141&v=maHGf3LNGMs

We will increasingly be able to call for replays, watch that tackle or kick over and over again from any angle and as time progresses even play it again using a first person player perspective perhaps taken from a player or referee wearing a jersey with a built-in FirstV1sion camera that will then let you play out your fantasy what if scenario’s and even include yourself in the virtual on field action.

Tomorrow’s fans will also come in a whole lot of different shapes, sizes and genders as the professional world of sports begin to chase after the female and young viewers knowing that if they are going to grow their fan bases and revenues in the next few decades their going to have to go for wider appeal.

With a long time understanding that future sport fans are determined by their early exposure of watching a team and playing a sport, expect to see more being done with junior leagues and more opportunities for female participation and women’s leagues in what have been predominantly male bastions.

The road for sports will continue to be based on human activity (although we will see some new digital and robot sports arise), but it will, as so many things are becoming, be ever more reliant and driven by technology and the digital world of tomorrow.

So have a listen now and then share your thoughts on tomorrow’s sporting world.

4BC Brisbane (18 minutes 53 seconds) – Clare Blake – Tuesday 6th October

ABC Radio Far North (15 minutes 00 seconds) – Phil Staley – Tuesday 6th October