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Every generation reshapes sport to reflect how it lives. New disciplines emerge, audiences evolve, and definitions of excellence shift. Today, the most consequential change is not a new format or technology, but a deeper transformation in how physical and digital experiences intersect in everyday life.
For much of the past century, sport assumed a clear boundary between the real and the virtual. You trained on the field, competed in the arena, and watched from the stands. That separation no longer reflects reality.
For younger generations in particular, digital environments are not an escape from the physical world but an extension of it. Work, learning, creativity, and social connection now move fluidly between screens and shared spaces. Sport is beginning to follow the same pattern.
The emergence of phygital sport
This is where so-called phygital sports have emerged, not as a novelty, but as a response to how people already engage with the world.
These hybrid formats combine physical performance with digital interaction, requiring participants to operate across both environments within a single competitive framework.
The point is not to replace traditional sport, just as esports never replaced football or athletics. It is acknowledged that physical skill and digital fluency are increasingly intertwined.
What makes this shift significant is not the technology itself, but what it demands from competitors. Success no longer depends solely on strength, speed, or endurance, nor purely on reaction time behind a screen. Instead, it requires adaptability, cognitive agility, and the ability to translate performance across environments. In that sense, hybrid competition mirrors the skills now expected well beyond sport, in education, the workplace, and creative industries, where people are asked to move seamlessly between physical execution and digital systems.
This convergence is already visible elsewhere. Architects design in virtual environments before building physical structures. Surgeons train using simulations before operating on real patients. Engineers stress-test systems digitally before exposing them to real-world conditions. Sport, historically one of the most tradition-bound cultural institutions, is now beginning to reflect the same logic.
There is also a social dimension to this evolution. Traditional sports structures have not always kept pace with changing patterns of participation, particularly among younger people who may engage deeply in digital competition but feel disconnected from legacy pathways. Hybrid formats can help bridge that gap by widening access points and recognising different forms of excellence, while still preserving the core values of discipline, teamwork, and physical effort.
Crucially, this does not diminish the physical. If anything, it raises the bar. Competing across physical and digital domains demands broader preparation and more diverse forms of excellence.
Athletes must be conditioned not only for exertion but for rapid decision-making, situational awareness, and collaboration with technology. The body remains central, but success now depends on how physical capability is integrated with higher cognitive load, sharper judgment, and sustained mental resilience within a more complex competitive system.
These questions about how humans and technology interact extend beyond sport. They sit at the heart of wider societal choices about education, talent development, and community participation. That is why some countries are beginning to treat sport not only as entertainment, but as a living laboratory for understanding how physical and digital systems can coexist productively.
Sport and its importance to the UAE
In the UAE, this approach aligns closely with ‘We the UAE 2031’, which prioritises human capital, social cohesion, and digital infrastructure at the centre of long-term development. The strategy recognises that future prosperity depends on preparing people to operate confidently across physical and digital worlds. Sport, when approached thoughtfully, can reinforce that ambition.
The designation of 2025 as the Year of Community further reflects this thinking. Community today is no longer defined solely by geography or tradition. It is shaped by shared interests, hybrid identities, and collective experiences that move between online and offline spaces. Competitive formats that reflect this reality can bring together participants and audiences who might otherwise remain disconnected.
One example of this experimentation is the Games of the Future, which was hosted this year in Abu Dhabi and brought together physical sport, esports, and technology-led disciplines under a single framework. Its relevance lies less in spectacle than in what it reveals about participation, governance, and engagement in a converging world.
Ultimately, sport evolves because society evolves. As physical and digital realities continue to merge, insisting that competition remain anchored to outdated distinctions risks making it less relevant to future generations. Embracing new formats does not mean abandoning tradition. It means recognising that excellence, like the world itself, no longer exists in a single dimension.
The writer is the CEO of ASPIRE.
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