The 2021 year paved the way for sports to get back on track and reassess things after the pandemic shakeup in 2020. The whole industry needed some time to get back to the progress level of the pre-pandemic world and technological advances played a key role in transforming every aspect of the sport. The dependence on technology has significantly increased over the period of time, it plays a big role in recruitment strategy, athletes training methods and improving audiences experience, and creating new revenue generation avenues. In this blog, we are going to analyze the top five technological trends that are prevalent in the sports industry now and their role in the future of the industry.
The Brave new world of Esports
The year 2022 is another good year for the Esports industry with unprecedented growth in its path ahead. Esports have truly explained how digital transformation is the next best thing for the sports industry and it has opened up new revenue areas for an investor as well as created new audiences. Currently, the industry is valued at $1.8 billion in revenue and has the potential to scale up to $2.5 billion dollar revenue by the end of the year. Esports has been one of the few entertainment ventures who have not been significantly affected by the global pandemic which pushed many sports organizations into heavy losses, so much so that they packed up certain operations. One of the most exciting trends currently seen in the industry is the movement of offline sports and teams into the online world by investments, for example, the Manchester City and Fortnite Esports contract. With more awareness, revenues would surely soar ahead. Interestingly, for the second time in history, the Asian Games 2022 will include Esports as one of the medaled events and it is such an initiative that would help Esports appeal to the mainstream audience.
Enhanced Fan Experience
With all the Esports hype, we have not forgotten the traditional sports this year. Technology is always evolving to come up with ways to innovate sports data solutions too. The 5 G-enabled stadiums are a positive step in offering a more immersive experience to the live audience. Qatar 2022 Football World Cup has partnered with Ericsson and Ooredoo to ensure that continuous connectivity is there in stadiums, airports, and other places of fan interactions with the power of social networking services they could even engage with the digital audience to offer an unforgettable experience.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The development in the field of Artificial Intelligence has truly been a blessing for the sports industry, for those of you who do not know was AI is, it is a technological advancement wherein a humans’ ability to think, sense, and react is mimicked by a machine. The AI-based systems are already prevalent across all major sports disciplines with the most popular ones being sensors, wearables, and computer vision-enabled cameras which uses AI to offer forecast models which are used to make decisions. With AI, athletes could now live stream or upload their match and even their training session and AI algorithms could then be powered to come up with a real-time or post-match performance analysis complete with speeds, techniques and even plotting graphs. This would help in developing a futuristic training program that could arm athletes with analytics and improve their performance in the long run.
Evolving Media platforms
Sports communication over time has completely evolved where once humans took hours to observe the match upload content and publish it, with AI-powered tools all of that is done intelligently and more efficiently to offer frequent publications with fewer resources. The channel of consuming sports data has also seen development with the social networks and digital channels making up for loin’s share of media consumption, 56% of fans ask for more interactive content which would be engaging and even create new audiences. Generation Z who has adopted a mobile-first approach in life would soon force companies to adopt an all-digital approach at the center of their strategy to survive. With more dependence on OTT and growth in streaming platform providers, fans have changed the way the sports business operated in the past. Now with sports widgets for websites companies can offer sports data in an attractive format across the platform to engage with customers.
Job Market
The theatrical shake-up that was handed to the sports industry after the pandemic affected the industry’s job market as well. Not just from the perspective of the structure but also the culture within the organization as well as the services/products they deliver. With the job market, a lot of new opportunities were up for grabs for good candidates and the unprecedented path that Covid-19 left behind forced the organizations to restructure their teams and force teams to learn new skill sets, and evolve in the post covid era where technology and talent were leading the way.
Technology has uncovered future opportunities in the sports industry in the past and continues to bring innovation in the field while brands, organizations, and clubs become more tech-reliant nowadays to continue to innovate and add better ways to entertain fans. The backbone of any technical innovation within the sports industry is sports data thus creating the need for professional sports data providers who can give you access to sports data feed with specific sports data APIs. Data Sports Group is a well-known name in the community and has participated in the technical advancement of the industry by providing the one thing technology would be useless without, sports data.
