🥇🤖🤸🧀 #9: Which Olympic sport suits you best? Fortnite Sportswear, Roblox Tennis & Gymnasts with Cheese

Welcome to Issue #9 of Innovation in Sport, your regular round-up of the latest innovations and trends in sports & esports technology, media, experience, impact & community.

With the Paris Olympics well and truly underway, I’m thoroughly enjoying the HBO Max app experience of being able to watch pretty much any event at any time.

Whilst I also appreciate the BBC’s editorially curated and Team GB-centric coverage - I’m fully embracing being able to dip my toe into events that wouldn’t necessarily make the main coverage, such as Judo, Kayaking, some of the more fringe Tennis matches, or even the meditative experience of watching commentary-free footage of surfers waiting patiently in the ocean for a wave to arrive.

With all eyes on Paris (or summer holidays), it’s been a slower week for sports innovation news - but there’s still plenty below - from Tennis in Roblox, to Olympic social media content trends, to adidas fashion collections in Fortnite, and Italian gymnasts with parmesan cheese.

So I hope you enjoy and, as always, please let me know if you’d like to see more or less of anything particular in Innovation in Sport.

POLL OF THE WEEK

💡INNOVATION x SPORTS 🦾

🚴‍♀️ LA indoor cycling and yoga studio, Spinergy, is reimagining group fitness with immersive digital voyages

📰 SportsTechX have released the results of a survey on the major innovation challenges faced by the leaders of some of the world's biggest sports organisations.

🎾 Pickleball World Rankings (PWR) is launching a global ranking system similar to tennis for the popular paddle sport, along with a world tour and major tournaments like Grand Slams.

Olga Correia, host venue and activation manager at supertri, discussed the benefits of hybrid reality sports for rights holders and host cities with SportsPro.

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📹 MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS 📱

🥇 In what have been dubbed ‘The TikTok Olympics’, this article sums-up some of the top athlete content trends from week one. 

📺 YouTube chief executive Neal Mohan says more people are watching live and on-demand sports on its big screen application than ever before, illustrating the rise of the video-sharing platform as a crucial channel for the industry.

👨🏽‍🤝‍👨🏼 FAN EXPERIENCE 🏟️

🏟️ Virtual Fanzone company Cheeer have published The Virtual Sports Fan Report 2024 full of virtual sports use cases of AI, WEB3, Metaverse, and more.

📱Czech start-up Nagano provides sports clubs with a more efficient and transparent way to interact with fans through competitions, mini-games, questionnaires, quizzes and other activities.

✨ CREATIVITY HIGHLIGHTS REEL 🎨
Showcasing the finest creative work in sports & esports

A day in the life of a  Wimbledon player in 60 seconds

Being firmly in my ‘tennis era’ right now, I thoroughly enjoyed this ‘Day in the life of a Wimbledon player in 60 seconds’ piece of content, created by Wimbledon Broadcast Studios.

It’s a great example of the type of behind-the-scenes shoulder content that social media audiences love, that can be possible if planned in advance and handed to gifted editors who understand the sport and audience well.

🌍 IMPACT & SUSTAINABILITY 🌍

⚽ LA’s Angel City, which has made community work part of the soccer club’s core mission, has launched a project designed to make the sport available at little or no cost to approximately 14,000 kids at more than 100 sites in Los Angeles.

🥇 Is there an argument for a permanent Olympic city? Olympic stadiums can be costly and wasteful—so why not just have one?

🎮 ESPORTS 🎮

🎾 Roblox players are experiencing three of the tennis Grand Slams via the Cross Court Challenge game, serving as a gateway to real-life participation and engagement with Tennis.

Recent research has found that esports and gaming can enhance the understanding of real-world sports, as well as increase interest and enjoyment of real-world sports in younger audiences.

🎮 Fortnite and adidas have launched a new partnership to bring branded sneakers and apparel inside the immensely popular battle royale video game.

🥇 The International Olympics Committee walked away from its partnership with Nintendo and Sega for the long-running Mario & Sonic Olympic Games series to explore deals with new partners, NFTs and esports, reports Eurogamer.

🤖 AI x SPORTS 🤖 

🥇 Sarah Vickers, head of Intel’s Olympic and Paralympic program, told Mashable that she believes AI will have its biggest Olympic impact in areas like event operations, the data-hungry world of broadcasting, and the fan experience itself. 

🏈 Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is building a new AI startup that will help creators generate art and written material for comic books.

📷 PHOTO(s) OF THE WEEK 📷

🤸 Olympic silver medalist and Italian gymnast Giorgia Villa is sponsored by parmesan cheese, making for some rather striking if unusual promotional photos..

⏱️ EXTRA TIME ⏱️
A little something extra

🥇 The first Paris Olympics logo was pretty wild, but the 2024 design is even more bizarre.

🥇 Ever wondered what Olympic sport would you play? Take this quiz.

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See you next time,

Adam Reed
Innovation in Sport

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