The turn of the new year always seems like a good time to take stock of what has happened during the last trip around the sun and lay out some predictions for the coming years. So I decided to do just that— make eight predictions about the world of sports for the next five years (semi-decade?). They range from extremely logical based on current trends in sport to far more speculative. Each of the predictions below could warrant its own full dissection, but I have tried to limit myself to 100 words per prediction, in an effort to highlight the prediction itself, and to save myself some time as work starts up again.
1. Thermal Management > All Else
Thermal management will become the single biggest area of product and process development for endurance sports, and will lead to significant improvements in most endurance race world records (marathon+ time for my purposes). Body heat emission can very easily represent a power output multiple times greater than mechanical locomotion power depending on the activity and ambient conditions, and attempts to increase the ratio of mechanical/thermal power output will yield not-so-marginal gains. Athletes will move away from equipment like trail running backpacks and cycling jerseys on climbs that trap heat and sweat to the body.
2. PGA vs. LIV Round 2?
There will be at least one major sports league (e.g. NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB, NASCAR, UCI, Premier League, etc.) that has a major upheaval, including a significant retraction in viewership/revenue, top teams exiting the league, or a complete restructuring or merging with other entities. Given the EU’s recent ruling on non-competitiveness, and a very clear desire in Saudi Arabia to fund new star-studded sporting leagues (somewhat successfully, I might add), there has never been more regulatory and financial pressure on existing sports leagues and institutions.
3. Micro(biome) Managing for the Win
In a continued pursuit to increase the rate of fuel (calories/carbs) that an athlete can process during an endurance event and to promote athlete recovery, professional endurance athletes will begin regularly sampling and actively modifying their gut microbiome. This will not become pervasive within 5 years, but the top teams and athletes will begin to pursue this optimization by the 2028 Olympics.
4. VR Remains on the Fringe of Exercise
Neither virtual reality (VR) nor augmented reality (AR) will become a major portion of the at-home exercise market. Screen-based products like Zwift, Peloton, Apple Fitness+, etc. will continue to thrive and grow but workout routines and products involving a VR or AR headset will not leave the hobbyist space to become more ubiquitous. I think that I could extend this prediction further into the future as I really see the use of a headset during any workout whether it’s stationary biking or yoga as a big detractor to the overall exercise experience.
5. Brain Trauma Continues to Gain Focus
The understanding of brain trauma induced by light, repeated impacts or single, severe impacts will develop to a point that minimum age limits are discussed or imposed for contact sports like football, hockey, boxing, martial arts, and more. This research may also bring about significant changes to the rules of the games themselves, including what is allowed in practices throughout the year. This is already clearly a focus for football teams, as the NFL has required teams to wear Guardian Caps in practice (which we’ve written about here), and there are rumblings they may soon be used in games.
6. Multi-year Training Plan Implementation
Endurance athletics will begin adopting training plans that span 5+ years, and are aimed very explicitly at long-term transformation and adaptation of the body for a specific race distance or type. As opposed to these adaptations being somewhat of a byproduct of doing the sport year after year on shorter training cycles, training plans specifically at optimizing these transformations will emerge. This could have drastic effects on Olympic training cycles, professional contract durations, career duration, and much more.
7. A New Era for the NCAA
At least one major collegiate sport (e.g. Football or Basketball) will leave the NCAA, or in an effort to retain control of those sports, the NCAA ends support for a much wider swath of lower-popularity collegiate sports. The NCAA feels like it is being pulled in multiple directions with the revenue and governance differences between it’s most-popular and least-popular sports, and precedents like Men’s D-I and Women’s Lightweight rowing operating under a separate governance body (the IRA) may lead to irreparable rifts within the NCAA.
8. What Goes Down, Must Come Up?
The esports industry will continue to retract in viewership and revenue for the next two years before beginning to regain traction and grow at a sustainable rate (following a classic Gartner hype cycle curve). As a result, esports will be featured in the Olympics for the first time in the 2030 or 2032 games (and I would venture a guess that they are dropped into the 2030 Winter Olympics).
If I am still alive, I will try to do a retrospective on these predictions in 2029!