About Brave New Sport

About The Study

Today’s sports landscape is embedded in a context of unprecedented change: ongoing globalisation, new players entering the industry, rising healthcare costs, technological disruptions, and climate change pose existential risks.

How can sports empower society to tackle these issues? The importance of this question and more is outlined in “Brave New Sport”, a forward-thinking study about the future of sports created through a collaboration between Infront and the independent Think Tank Web for Interdisciplinary Research and Expertise (W.I.R.E.).

The book explores the co-evolution of sport, technology and society and how it could develop to reflect the world’s needs over the next 30 years. Using interviews with experts in sport, psychology, business, politics, human enhancement and architecture as well as over 100 research sources, the publication showcases sport’s current functions, opportunities and challenges. It outlines how sport can act as a positive catalyst on social, economic, political and technological issues in the future.

The findings serve as a basis for nine predictions and bold scenarios which cover trends such as the rise of machine sports and artificial intelligence, the change of power structures and how sports are organised, financed and performed as well as the hyper fragmentation of channels and content. The final chapter rounds up the findings, acting as guidelines for business, politics and society.