Play Ball! How Sports Will Change in the 21st
Century
By Robin Gunston
Politics, celebrity, and other forces have undermined organized
athletics, altering the playing field in the coming decades.
Welcome to the twenty-first century's wide world of sports—a
rapid-paced world where technology is as much a part of the game as muscle, where sports
celebrity rivals religious worship, and where winning at all costs is the name of the
game.
Religious influences have always been associated with much of early
sports' development. Each of the Panhellenic games was dedicated to a god or goddess with
its accompanying, usually sexually driven rituals. In the early nineteenth century, it was
often established churches that instigated organized events in a community or in its
schools, especially as shortening working hours gave people more time to indulge in
leisure activities other than churchgoing.
In addition to religion, the type of work performed at various points in
history has also influenced sports. Until modern times, armies and navies needed men with
high degrees of fitness and strength, and military training manuals record the playing of
team games as well as regimented physical exercise as core principles for building up
muscle and morale—and for reinforcing hierarchies and establishing order.
Sports have also been used to separate social classes. Some sports, such
as tennis and horse racing, began centuries ago as the exclusive pursuits of nobles and
kings. Polo continues to be associated mainly with wealth and royalty, and only those with
considerable wealth can indulge in such popular new sports as motor racing, despite the
sport's incredible popularity.
Another strong influence on the shape of modern sports is the ongoing
conflict between amateurs and professionals. Amateur team sports started to surface in an
organized way in the nineteenth century, often following their introduction at English
public schools and universities or their counterparts in British colonies, including
India, South Africa, and Australia.
Key Trends
Here are the key trends that I believe will have the most impact and
that may lead to different possible futures for sports.
- Sports have become an entertainment business.
Postmodernism has transformed sports. ... Anyone looking for further evidence that sports
are big business only needs to pick up a local television guide and look at the sheer
variety of choices available to the viewer: poker, lawn-mower racing, bungee-jumping,
elephant polo, juggling, and more. Can this trend go on forever? Increasingly, the answer
is, "no."
- Team sports versus the individual. An emerging trend
that seems set to continue is the demise of team sports and the ascendance of individual
sports. This trend seems closely associated with changes to work-life balance and the
culture of individualism apparent in most of Generation X.... The serious fitness addict
or sporting person is turning more to individual pursuits—such as triathlons,
marathons, the personal fitness regimen at the gym, and Ironman competitions—to
achieve prowess.
- Club ownership. The majority of team sports, including
baseball, basketball, soccer, and rugby, are in professional leagues and managed as
business franchises. ... Business owners, however much they may like a sport or a club,
want one thing above all else: a better-than-normal rate of return on their investment.
- The impact of terrorism. Terrorism ... is an
international, omnipresent movement seemingly inspired by hatred for all things Western
and American. These could eventually affect sports at all levels.
- Designer drugs. The trend for sports people to enhance
their performance through substances is not a modern one. ... Both coaches and
pharmaceutical interests have been trying to find drugs that avoid detection. When testers
catch up, athletes inevitably end up losing—their records, their medals, their
sponsorships, and their reputations.
- High-technology equipment. We may see completely new
forms of artificial-intelligence-based machinery taking over areas of human activity
within the next 20 years. Sports are no exception to this trend.
- The sports industry. Sports are no longer just pastimes.
They are big business. Over a 20-year period, there has been a 10,000% increase in sports
sponsorship, affecting every possible sport imaginable. ... Without sponsors, there will
be no teams or individual superstar athletes.
Future Scenarios for Sports
Religiosport could develop as major sports replace conventional
religion.
Machosport is a future where individual sports people become
popular idols, feted wherever they go, promoted by the media, and put on display as being
the ideal of modern man or woman.
Technosport develops when winning is everything and ethics counts
for nothing.
Valuesport will see an end to the big business of organized team
sports and events.
...
About the Author
Robin Gunston is chairperson of Futures Thinking Aotearoa.
Excerpted from THE FUTURIST, January-Febuary
2005. Click
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