Losing our brains with disruptive technologies (XXXVIII): Sports for money.
“Don´t Look at me”. A watercolor from Eleonora Escalante. Serie: Baby animals Collection. Size: 5″ x 7″. Made with love on watercolor paper Fabriano 5. 210GSM If you wish to buy it, let me know. You can contact me through this blog inbox.
Last Friday I posted a light but an extensive summary of the ancient sport’s history. I tried to show you that throughout all our ancestors’ timeline, the sports have been practiced consistently, regardless of the type of civilization. The cause of competition in sports has been distinctively different, depending on the culture and its ties to divinity and sacrifice rituals to their Gods, but if we read between lines again my last publication, I hope you could discover that there were five common elements when it comes to ancient sports:
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- It was a corporal activity that required training and preparation.
- It was a physical pursuit that was exposed to an audience, a group of people, a spectacle show. People gathered in stadiums, or a particular type of infrastructure not just to watch the sport, but to cheerleader its favorite team or athlete.
- It was a lifetime venture that was linked to a high-intensity exercise, to military reasons, the majority of times of a dynamic nature, with a direct link to the danger of bodily injury from collision or accident that would put the athlete on high risk of death.
- It was an activity that implied a winner and a loser. In some history epochs, if the athlete lost the game or the competition, he paid it with his life.
- It was a male activity, with little participation of women.
These 5 constituents were involved in sports for centuries of centuries. As you can see, the financial commercial aspects of competitive sports were probably linked only on certain occasions with the figure of “betting” for a cause. Let´s say there were two high-end merchants who were in love with a noble lady. These two athletes could convene to compete in a horse race, and the winner was able to marry her. Other sport causes were simply linked to sacrifices to their gods. And sometimes, it could be possible that athletes may be able to win their freedom from slavery, once they win to a noble in a specific contest. The participation of the audience had little to do with money, which means people freely attended these events.
Sports are dynamic and static. In our days, and after a century of the World Olympics development organization, the possibility of sports to women, the sophistication and expansion of many sports disciplines, the application of new rules and resources sports technologies; we are able to observe a vast range of sports activities, which can be generally classified in dynamic or static. According to an article published by Mitchel et Al, “Dynamic exercise involves changes in muscle length and joint movement with rhythmic contractions that develop a relatively small intramuscular force; and static exercise involves the development of a relatively large intramuscular force with little or no change in muscle length or joint movement. These two types of exercise should be thought of as the two opposite poles of a continuum, with most physical activities involving both static and dynamic components”.
“In addition, sports can be aerobic or anaerobic. Anaerobic exercise is an activity that characterizes activity on the basis of the type of muscle metabolism. Most high-intensity static exercise is performed anaerobically, whereas high-intensity dynamic exercise lasting for more than several minutes is performed aerobically”.
Please see the figure below for a general classification of sports:
Classification of sports. This classification is based on peak static and dynamic components achieved during competition. Original Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Classification-of-organized-sports-and-exercise-This-classification-is-based-on-peak_fig1_51588528
The impact of NAIQI technologies in sports. NAIQI technologies have been used to manufacture multiple sports resources. As you know I am an avid swimmer. In addition, I still practice several types of sports, from running, jogging, power walking, dancing-aerobics, and spinning. In the past, when I was a child, I also practiced Olympic gymnastics and classic ballet. As a result, I deeply love to exercise sports, not for competitive reasons, but for my health, brain possibilities and well being.
Many of us practice sports at a competitive level, but that is not the majority. The preponderance of us is simply and only an audience on competitive sports, and a fitness participant of one sport discipline. Our global world loves to attend and to see (directly or by using media) many types of sports events and now e-sports. Personally, I have seen an evolution of sports products and services related to the sports industries, and currently, we have a complex network of sports sub-industries, particularly when the sports tied the knot with cyclical events per year, fashion, media and the science of new material technologies. The emergence of e-sports has captivated the millennials and generation Z. ( E-Sport or competitive video gaming is a multiplayer video game played competitively for spectators, typically by professional gamers).
Most watched e-sports watched 2019. E-sports revenues were projected to be around USD 1 Billion for last year. https://game-thought.com/esports/league-of-legends-csgo-and-dota-2-were-the-most-watched-esports-last-year/
Nowadays sports are a huge business. And they have several ramifications not just for the athletes but using NAIQI technologies for the audiences who follow them through media or by attending to sports events or competitions. The traditional soccer sports business model, for example, those related to sports events, as the UEFA leagues were also starting to see e-sports as a potential competitor.
Traditionally, sports events have been extremely successful. In football soccer leaves, if the teams are able to pay annual salaries of US$100 million dollars per year to Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, that is just a sample of how much money is moving in and out of the sport global industry. According go Business Wire (a company of Berkshire Hathaway), the global sports industry represents around 500 Billion dollars (2019), and it was expected to grow to around 615 billion for 2022. The sports industry is not anymore classified by the type of activity in relation to our heart health (static or dynamic), but it is market-driven by the massive audiences. For example, Business Wire has segmented the sports industry in the next two largest groups:
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- Participatory Sports: Fitness and Recreational sport centers, golf courses and country clubs, others such as marinas, bowling centers, skiing facilities, etc
- Spectator Sports: Sports Teams & Clubs, Racing & Individual Sports,
In addition, AT Kearney has analyzed the sports industry value chain by Revenue Source, which includes: Media Rights, Merchandising, Tickets, and Sponsorship. Watch the following figure please:
How the revenues flow in sports? Source: https://www.es.kearney.com/communications-media-technology/article?/a/winning-in-the-business-of-sports
AT Kearney experts have foreseen that sports will remain one of the most valuable parts of the media and entertainment industry globally for years to come.
The spirit of sports has completely changed. NAIQI technologies have thrown and twisted us with multiple gadgets and applications at the individual level. Whatever your interest (participatory or spectator), you are now able to buy or download for free whatever type of application that you could imagine in the Google playstore, from speedometers, calorie trackers, heart rate tracker systems, fitness routines, e-personal trainers, gym routine planners, swimming drills analytics, yoga workouts, abs workouts, etc. There are thousands of applications in relation to any type of sports routines.
In relation to sports clothing: Technologies for fabrics and new light materials for equipment, merchandising of innumerable types, and tech wearables started to emerge since 10 years ago. The disruption came with the entrance of the Iphone (2008). Giants sport gear producers are designing wearables for each sports discipline that now are linked to our Smartphone to measure our level of sports activities, not just our location. In addition, new materials that do not stink when we sweat to lightweight materials and designs used for sports equipment and devices are available at reasonable prices for everyone who can afford them.
My reflection about sports. We have forgotten to create technology that can help us to understand the level of involvement of our muscles, brain, and heart with the intensity and the type of stress that we can handle with muscle metabolism when we practice sports. And this is extremely important for all of us. We have switched the core of the sport, for the merchandising, fans adjacency sources of revenues and spectators’ sources of income. Now we are adding the e-sports and sports streaming related to the sports revenues pie. And we have lost the original roadmap in which our wellbeing is the most important component of the industry. By converting the whole sports industry in a market-driven industry to cash money, we have lost the route to save us. We have lost the importance of understanding the emotional stress that athletes or anyone who practices sports experience during competitive events, or during training workouts. We have forgotten the effects of environmental factors on our human yield capacity during training, we have forgotten the electrolyte abnormalities and the different cardiovascular demands that individually, each of us, are required to observe daily. For example; each of us, since we are little, has to understand how our heart functions when we train our sports routines, in terms of blood pressure, heart rate, myocardial contractility, oxygen demand, how to breathe to keep our emotions relaxed. Mitchell et Al, adds: “Environmental exposure during athletic competition or training also needs to be considered. Performance at high altitudes or underwater may decrease oxygen availability, whereas excessively hot or cold temperatures and high humidity can increase the myocardial workload for the same intensity of exercise. Another potentially relevant environmental factor is air pollution which is contaminating our lungs, regardless if we practice sports inside a gym arena or outdoors.
The sports industries have to be seen from inside out, and not as a cash production maquila of streaming, products, and services for those who lead the industry. It is our health that matters the most. Sports are tied to our cardiovascular capacity and we have forgotten what weighs the greatest.
Tomorrow we will continue with the art recreation activities… Thank you.
Sources of reference utilized to support my ideas for this article:
https://esportsinsider.com/2020/01/esports-viewership-2019/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15837288
https://www.thebusinessresearchcompany.com/report/sports-market
Disclaimer: Illustrations in Watercolor are painted by Eleonora Escalante. Other types of illustrations or videos (which are not mine) are used for educational purposes ONLY. Nevertheless, the majority of the pictures, images or videos shown on this blog are not mine. I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated.
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