Adapt or Die: Technology Is Forever Altering Sports

Improvements in technology have been generally celebrated in sports. However, it is time to question the idea that this progress has been for the better. As we enter the 2020s, it is clear that technology presents an existential threat to the modern sports landscape as the root cause of many irreversible changes. Existing sports must adapt to become better suited for this new environment or face the prospect of declining popularity.

To be clear, this is not a theory. These changes are already occurring and have affected nearly every sport and every aspect of sports. What began for me as an exploration of whether advancements in computing and analytics are changing the way sports are played, leading to decreases in overall enjoyment of the industry has extended to other areas. Some of these include the effects of technology on how we consume sports, the integrity of sports, and the types of sports and games we will play and watch in the future.

This is a deep, multifaceted discussion, but every discussion needs a starting point. Let’s begin by showing the power of computers and what happens when they become strong enough at a game to beat the best human players — something already seen in mind sports. Many of the current issues in that realm are strongly connected to those in what we would consider traditional sports.

Mind Sports and the Quest to “Solve” Games

When the field of artificial intelligence (AI) became an academic discipline in the 1950s, teaching computers to play games was both an interesting challenge for researchers and a way to measure the progress of these machines. Being perhaps the most famous strategy game of all and one of incredible complexity, chess was naturally of interest.

For decades, computers consistently improved, rising in Elo rating at a much faster rate than the top human players. The culmination of 40 years of effort came with a pair of six-game matches between Garry Kasparov, the reigning world chess champion, and Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer developed by IBM.

Deep Blue won the first game of their 1996 match, becoming the first computer to defeat a world champion in a classical game under tournament regulations. Kasparov tied the series in game 2 and would take the match 4–2. However, in their rematch the following year, Deep Blue emerged victorious in a decisive sixth game to defeat the world champion 3 ½–2 ½.

Immediately following the loss, Kasparov blamed the result on his poor performance rather than the strength of his opponent. Yet, symbolically, the damage was done. The Deep Blue matches garnered significant media attention and were seen as a breakthrough for artificial intelligence. Some had predicted that computers would never be able to defeat top human players. Deep Blue was a testament to the power of computers. While there was a short period where it was debatable whether man or machine was stronger, by the early 2000s, it became clear that chess computers reigned supreme and were still improving. Humans would never stand a chance again.

That progress is still ongoing as chess engines pass Elo thresholds previously thought unachievable. There is still some disagreement over whether chess will ever be solved, but as computer skill rises, the competition between engines to perfect the game remains healthy.

There may be no more matches between humans and computers that are garnering any attention, but in place of that rivalry, chess AI has taken on a new role for humans — that of a training tool.

For the top chess professionals, technology is essential to their study and preparation. Players can review their previous matches with chess engines to determine where they made mistakes and what their best option was on every move. Over time, this helps them develop a better sense of the game. They can also use databases of past matches to study specific opponents and decide which strategies to employ against them in upcoming tournaments. This allows them to train as efficiently as possible.

The increased access to information provided by technology has made today’s top human chess players better than ever before. But while this enhanced quality of play is exciting, it has not come without consequences.

During the 2018 World Chess Championship match between reigning titleholder Magnus Carlsen and challenger Fabiano Caruana, all 12 scheduled matches resulted in a draw. This meant the match was forced to go to a set of faster-paced tiebreak games where Carlsen defended his crown.

This high frequency of drawn games was not a one-time occurrence. In Carlsen’s previous title defense against Sergey Karjakin, 10 of 12 games were drawn, with the championship again being decided in tiebreakers. Overall, 75% of the games played in the last seven world championship matches have ended in a tie, with a clear trend towards more ties over time.

Beyond just the end results, on a move per move basis, play in these world championship matches has become more precise, with the moves made getting closer to the strongest possible moves. In a similar trend, the differences in quality of play between winning and losing players are closer than ever before, meaning among the world’s best, margins are thinner than ever before. This can be attributed to the extreme preparedness of players, who often have a good idea of what type of game will be played before it even begins.

It only makes sense that as the overall skill of players increases, there will be less separating them. With the stakes so high, play becomes more memorized, fewer risks are taken, and more games end as draws. In fact, in 2018, Carlsen, who holds a much larger edge over Caruana in faster games, seemed content to play for draws in the classic games and take the match to tiebreakers.

It’s difficult to criticize Carlsen or any other player for acting in ways that give them the best chance at success. That being said, many chess fans criticized the Carlsen-Caruana match as boring, and if decisive results are the mark of exciting play, there is a real reason to be concerned, as we should only expect to see more tight, mostly-drawn games in future iterations of the World Chess Championship.

For me, complaints about the modern state of chess speak to the reason why we play games. The objective of a game is not necessarily to win — often, it’s to try to figure out how to win. We create and apply different strategies to test what works and adjust accordingly. The beauty is in the experimentation. At such a high level, much of that experimentation goes away. The closer a game gets to being solved, the less exciting it can be.

Public perception of major chess tournaments is important, as using chess as a main source of income is only viable for a select few professionals. Should the excitement be taken out of the game, companies will be less willing to sponsor individuals and events, interest will wane at the local level, and the support for competitive chess will diminish. With this in mind, it’s worth asking whether changes should be made to either the rules of chess or the format of tournaments like the World Chess Championship to prevent draws and increase overall fan appeal.

But chess isn’t the only mind sport where technology has made its mark. Artificial intelligence programs have been designed to master many other games, including those of similar or even greater complexity than chess, such as Go. In 2016, AlphaGo, a Go-playing program developed by Google DeepMind, defeated 18-time world champion Lee Sedol four games to one. The following year, a stronger version of AlphaGo defeated current world champion Ke Jie in each of three games, and since, even stronger versions of the program have been developed, with AlphaZero the most recent. This was another huge step for AI, as there are more possible games of Go than atoms in the observable universe. AlphaZero has also shown an ability to beat both top human players and engines in Shogi.

Chess, Go, and Shogi, however, are all games of perfect information, where each player has full knowledge of the game state at any point in time. Poker, on the other hand, is a game of imperfect information, since players are not aware of the cards in their opponents’ hands. This has made poker a particularly tricky game for computer programs to play well until recently. (An AI developed by Carnegie Mellon and Facebook AI is currently capable of defeating the top human players, albeit under certain restrictions.)

Yet, humans have still made major advancements in strategy, and few sports, if any, have seen such a drastic improvement in quality of play over just the 21st century. Like chess, though, this has come at the viewer’s expense.

Many of the boisterous personalities from poker’s yesteryear have been replaced with a new-age type of player who plays slower, more methodically, and uses an extensive knowledge of the game’s mathematics, rather than playing based on instincts or “feel”. They’ve grown up in an era where online poker, even at the lowest stakes, has become much more difficult, and computer software such as head-up displays (HUDs) allows players to view the tendencies of their opponents and adjust their strictly regimented game plans accordingly.

While not quite as severe as chess, there is once again a lack of experimentation. The game has never been played at such a high level before, but while those familiar with poker can appreciate that complexity, it can simultaneously be easy to watch a silent table of cold, calculating twenty-somethings in hoodies and wonder what happened. While this isn’t representative of the entire poker community, it’s undeniable that a major shift has taken place.

Measures such as shot clocks and big blind antes have been implemented to improve the pace of play, but more than anything, poker needs interesting personalities to spice up the table. (Having entertaining and recognizable participants is a huge component for the popularity of any sport.) This is much easier with televised cash games, where players are chosen for their personalities and encouraged to put on a show, as opposed to tournaments, which are far more serious in tone.

The stakes have been raised, particularly in the last decade, for tournaments, with the rise of high roller and super high roller tournaments which regularly feature $100,000 buy-ins and have even reached $1 million or more, but at some point, higher stakes won’t be enough to garner more watching interest. It’s also worth noting that the massive sums of money involved and tighter margins between players could lead to a tense atmosphere and community.

Luckily, poker has several attributes that make it well-positioned for the future. These will be discussed in more detail later, but specifically, the fact that the prize pools are put up by players in the form of buy-ins means poker will stay popular as long as people want to play, and considering how enticing gambling can be, the game is in safe hands.

It’s also worth mentioning here that while in chess, there is theoretically always a “best” move to be played, the same cannot be said for poker, due to the imperfect nature of the game and differences in styles between players, which can be affected by many factors even outside of the hand such as the number of players remaining in a tournament and the payout structure.

But for the top players, even if the competitive structure remains, will the motivation be there? This is something I’ve long wondered about mind sports in particular. We’ve reached the point where humans will never again beat the top computer programs. Previously, the chess world champion could claim to be exactly that — the best player in the world. That’s no longer the case. The same is true for Go and shogi. AI has not surpassed humans in every variant of poker, but that’s only because it hasn’t been a priority. The fundamentals are in place, and with time and effort, the computer will be king there too.

So, when being the best at a game is impossible, even if you dedicate your entire life to it, will top pros lose interest in competing? Of course, there are other reasons to compete, and some may not be bothered by their inferiority to machines. For a certain type of player, though, it could be very discouraging.

It seems that recently, we have found an example of one such player. Lee Sedol, the Go world champion who lost to AlphaGo back in 2016, retired in November 2019, citing the rise of AI as a primary reason for his decision. “Even if I become number one,” he said, “there is an entity that cannot be defeated.” As a species, our brains are our greatest asset. Now, humanity’s mind sport champions must cope with their permanent inferiority. Anything you can do, AI can do better.

Opportunities for AI in Traditional Sports

Artificial intelligence has already made its mark on mind sports, but there may be opportunities for AI to break into traditional sports as well. To illustrate this, I’d like to start by briefly touching on esports.

As mind sports have been solved, and a similar trend has occurred in esports. Notably, OpenAI’s team of five neural networks appropriately named “OpenAI Five” was able to beat OG, the greatest Dota 2 team in the world, and Google DeepMind’s AlphaStar program has recently reached the grandmaster level in the real-time strategy game StarCraft II and is capable of beating 99.8% of human players. AIs have shown themselves to be elite in many other games as well.

These video games feature nonstop, simultaneous action by competing parties. They can contain many playable characters, each with a unique skill set, and require the development of strategies to achieve short and long-term goals. This requires both the skill and understanding to complete several different actions per second and the ability to adapt to a constantly changing game state. Games involving multiple players on a team additionally force players to cooperate to coordinate actions.

There is effectively an infinite amount of ways a match can play out. This range of possible outcomes and overall complexity is comparable to traditional sports. There might not be perfect solutions to every situation, as these are imperfect games, but if computers can strategize better than humans in an esports environment, who’s to say the same thing won’t happen in traditional sports?

Esports startup Gosu.ai is an AI video game coach which currently is available to help gamers at League of Legends, Dota 2, and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). It works by watching a user’s matches and then sending them post-match analytics and analysis which allows them to improve their game. Recently, the company has announced a voice assistant for League of Legends which will provide in-game advice as well.

This particular AI is likely years away from being used in a professional capacity, but using artificial intelligence in coaching seems like an inevitability, both in and outside of esports. It would be more difficult to implement in games with constant action, but in sports like baseball or football, which are comprised of individual pitches or plays, AI could be used as a play-caller.

In baseball, this means learning from the tendencies of opposing players to tell pitchers what pitches to throw, fielders where to position themselves, and batters what they are likely to face. Based on personnel and game state, football plays could be called to maximize a team’s chances of winning.

In the Madden video game series, players are offered suggestions on what plays to run based off of this same information. Factor in an understanding of the opposition’s tendencies, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that AI could call plays better than NFL head coaches and coordinators in the near future, if not immediately.

All sports should be working on developing AI for similar purposes. This wouldn’t necessarily put coaches out of work — they’d still get the final say on decision-making and would be necessary for leadership, emotional support, and help with the mental game, not to mention practice and training, among a host of other things. It would, however, maximize a team’s chances on the field, which, of course, is the bottom line in the sports industry.

Let’s look beyond coaching — could AI be the athletes of the future? In the future, will we watch robots play sports?

One could argue that we already do. Both the Top Chess Engine Competition (TCEC) and Chess.com’s Computer Chess Championship (CCC) are competitions between the best chess engines in the world that are streamed live online. The Computer Olympiad similarly pits computer programs against each other in a variety of games.

However, these events are incredibly niche. We’re still a far cry from a mainstream sporting experience where people tune in to watch their favorite algorithms duke it out. Down the line, this remains a possibility, but the sport in question would have to feature gameplay more easily understandable than something like chess.

For example, the average person would be unable to understand a chess match between the Stockfish and Komodo engines. Even for those familiar with chess, the engines perform at such a high level that it is impossible to fully understand their strategies.

While only a select few people are capable of grasping the full capabilities of computers, human greatness is far more evident. In a game of basketball, even if a viewer cannot perform the actions they are watching, it is not difficult to comprehend what is occurring. Any robot vs. robot competition would require this element of intelligibility.

Naturally, this leads to the idea of robots playing these sports which already have large fan bases. As a whole, a sport like basketball would be one of the hardest for robots to master, specifically in terms of the motion involved. They are, however, capable of shooting the ball incredibly effectively from a set position. Robots are skilled at these precise movements, and their ability to remain steady has made them valuable in the manufacturing and medical industries, among others. This means that there are some sports such as archery and darts where robots are already capable of surpassing humans.

So why don’t we watch robot archery? Outside of the regulations preventing robots from participating in competitions such as the Olympics, one reason is that we don’t want to see perfection. It’s boring.

Humans may strive for perfection, but that’s only because it is unattainable. There will always be ways for us to get better. The human idea of perfection is really about continual improvement. On the other hand, robots can be programmed to never miss. For watching someone (or something) succeed to be interesting, the possibility of failure must exist.

In many individual pursuits, failure can be just about eliminated in robots. This is what makes the concept of head-to-head competition so exciting, as not every participant can win. I would expect to see effort made over the coming decades to create robots capable of playing these types of sports. Still, I’m unsure of how appealing watching these competitions would be.

All competition between robots is missing the emotional element. As humans, we want to know our athletes’ backgrounds — their journey to reach the present moment. That contains the successes along with the struggles and sacrifices. We want to see their emotions and learn about their personalities.

We want to see the pinnacle of human achievement. For us, there is a difference between having the right skills and strategy and being able to execute. Even if robots are better overall, being able to perform and to be the best on any given day will always be interesting.

Perhaps we will see an increase in competitions that blend elements of traditional sports with technology, such as in combat robotics and drone racing. This could even lead to humans controlling robots in sports like basketball or soccer as if they were real-life video games. At least in these scenarios, the humans behind the machines are more prominent and actually involved in the game. This visibility allows for more opportunities to create stories. For now, though, more opportunities seem to exist behind the scenes rather than on the field.

Aesthetics, Pace of Play, and the Viewing Experience

Even if robots aren’t taking over the roles of athletes, technology is still having a huge impact on the viewing experience of sports. The analytics movement has led to major shifts in the way sports are played which have made games slower-paced and less aesthetically pleasing, while the development of new entertainment options over time has created barriers to live sports and more appealing alternatives to them.

The rise of advanced statistics in sports begins with baseball. Bill James got the ball rolling with his annual Baseball Abstract, and the idea of maximizing efficiency hit the mainstream with Billy Beane and the Moneyball A’s. No major sport, though, has been as affected by the rise of analytics than basketball, and it all has to do with the three-point shot.

During the 1979–80 NBA season, the first year with a three-point line, teams attempted an average of just 2.8 threes per game. It would take another eight seasons before that number reached even five per game. In the early days of the three, the shot was mainly reserved for late-game situations and desperate, end of shot clock heaves.

Over time, players who grew up in the three-point era entered the league and shot from long-distance from a higher rate. Still, the shot was highly underutilized when compared to its potential effectiveness. The NBA managed to entice more threes by moving the line in for a few years in the mid-90s, but when the line returned to its original place, attempts from behind the line dipped, and wouldn’t return to the same level for another decade.

It wasn’t until the 2010s that the NBA uncovered the true value of the three. NBA shot tracking data and visualization from Kirk Goldsberry showed that by far, the most efficient places to shoot the ball are from under the basket and behind the three-point line.

Surprisingly, once you get beyond about five feet from the basket, shooting percentages from each distance are highly consistent out to about 25 feet, all between about 35 and 40%. The only difference between them is that some of the shots are worth an entire extra point. By minimizing shots taken in the mid-range and focusing on more threes to go along with layups and free throws, the most valuable shot of all, teams could increase their offensive efficiency.

The NBA took note, and as if a switch was flipped, three-point attempts ballooned in the 2010s from 18.0 by each team per game in 2010–11 to 32.0 (36.9% of all shot attempts) in the 2018–19 season. We now see a three-pointer every 45 seconds during a game, with the long-range explosion showing no signs of slowing down.

Modern basketball is as mathematically optimal as ever. Yet, there is a growing number of people displeased with the NBA’s on-court product. At times, the game feels like a glorified three-point shootout with little actual skill as players chuck the deep ball back and forth while simultaneously attempting to draw fouls by any means necessary.

It’s easy to characterize the changes in basketball this decade by what we’ve gained in terms of increases in three-point shot attempts, but it may be more telling to examine the situation in terms of what we’ve lost. With the rise in threes, there has been a drastic decline in the mid-range game and the post game.

These shifts have disproportionately affected the power forward and center positions. Traditionally used to playing in and around the paint, these positions are now being asked to develop an outside shot and forced to defend on the perimeter. Big men now have to be more capable ball handlers, and their rebounding edge has taken a hit from the longer rebounds that come from three-point attempts.

In this NBA, the ability to shoot from three and handle like a guard are practically prerequisites for every position. As a result, the traditional big man has become a dying breed, in favor of positionless basketball and small ball. The NBA is trending towards a game where every player looks and plays similar to each other. Math has dictated that there are right and wrong ways to play basketball, and diversity will be sacrificed for efficiency.

If the rise of analytics is destroying old ways of playing basketball, the Houston Rockets are the Grim Reaper. Under general manager Daryl Morey, the Rockets have embraced analytics more so than any other franchise with an approach to the game dubbed “Moreyball”.

From the philosophy of head coach Mike D’Antoni to the playing style of superstar James Harden and construction of the entire roster, Houston has borderline religiously sought out maximizing offensive efficiency. During the 2017–18 season, the Rockets became the first team in the history of the NBA to shoot more threes than twos, something they repeated in 2019 by averaging 45.4 three-point attempts per game. Harden took more than 13 of those himself and has also averaged double-digit free throw attempts in six of his first seven seasons with the team.

Granted, some people enjoy the analytical masterclass of Rockets basketball, but as time goes on, more and more fans see them as boring or frustrating to watch. When the team, and Harden, in particular, is hot, it can be exciting. But when they go cold, things get ugly quickly. Considering that it seems inevitable that every team will soon look like the Rockets, this doesn’t spell good things for the NBA.

This situation is interesting because until very recently, the three-pointer was seen as one of the most thrilling things in sports. Stephen Curry transformed the game with his shooting ability and remains incredibly popular despite his game being mimicked throughout the league.

The difference is that with Curry, not only was he the first person to really weaponize the three-point shot, he also happens to be the greatest shooter in the history of the league. In his record-shattering 2015–16 season where he made 402 threes, Curry shot better from behind the arc (45.4%) than the NBA as a whole on all shots (45.2%). It was Curry’s transformative shooting ability that led to his popularity, not simply the fact that he shot tons of threes.

There is nothing transformative about the Rockets taking loads of three-pointers. Instead of shooting so well one can’t take their eyes off them, the Rockets simply take a ton of threes and convert at a rate just good enough to make it better than any other strategy. NBA teams have realized that when everyone knows how valuable the three is, it’s practically impossible to win playing certain other styles of basketball.

This is what fans don’t like. To briefly return to chess, play at the highest level has become boring because there is less experimentation and differences between players. The NBA is experiencing a similar issue. Fans want there to be potential for players and teams of different skill sets to succeed. The players who in previous eras would be the most dominant inside players are now spotting up from 25 feet away from the basket.

Shooting a high-volume of three-pointers might lead to the most efficient offense in the modern NBA, but what is mathematically optimal is not necessarily the most aesthetically pleasing.

There is beauty in the suboptimal. So many of our most memorable moments in sports come from ill-advised decisions, unique occurrences, and high degree of difficulty successes. We love spontaneity, randomness, and the things you can’t draw up in a playbook. In chasing the optimal, we lose these things.

Just as with basketball, baseball has experienced a decline in diversity in favor of the analytically superior. Recent years have seen surges in what are known as the three true outcomes — home runs, walks, and strikeouts. The most efficient offenses specialize in the former two, while the latter comes as a consequence of trying to achieve them. Players are more reluctant to swing their bat in hopes of earning a base on balls, but when they do swing, it’s for the fences.

The three true outcomes got their name because they don’t require action from any of the defenders outside of the pitcher and catcher. A rise in these outcomes means fewer balls in play and less overall action.

Along with drops in action, analytics have led to longer game times and slower pace of play. Added patience from batters means that the average plate appearance features more pitches. Additionally, an increase in pitching changes over time to both manage pitcher health and create more favorable matchups against batters has extended the length of games.

Pace of play has been a major talking point in not only baseball but also a number of other sports. The shot clock, an idea which started in basketball to manage pace of play, has already been adapted in sports such as football (called the play clock), certain poker tournaments, and minor league baseball in the form of a pitch clock. The MLB is likely to add a pitch clock in the near future, and even golf is starting to toy with the idea of a shot clock.

Working to reduce average game lengths in sports is a good idea, but I wonder how much of the problem is less a result of the games themselves and more a consequence of technological influences outside of them.

In 2019, the average MLB regular season game was three hours and 10 minutes long. 100 years ago, that number would be under two hours. In fact, six out of eight games in the 1919 World Series lasted one hour and 47 minutes or shorter. Yes, that was at the end of the Dead Ball Era, and there have since been rule changes to increase offense and the adoption of strategies that have made games longer. Still, this only accounts for a portion of the difference.

Those games were played before the television, and thus featured very few stoppages in play. In contrast, the average MLB broadcast today features at least 45 minutes of commercials.

Even when games were televised, though, baseball was the most popular sport in the U.S. for a long time. The biggest difference between then and now is competition. Back in, say, the 1960s or 70s, people were more willing to sit down and watch an entire baseball game because fewer things were competing for their attention. There were once only three or four TV channels. Now, there are hundreds.

In the 21st century, computers, smartphones, and other devices provide almost unlimited entertainment options. The world is more connected and fast-paced than ever, and we’re doing other things than watching sports. Even when we decide to tune in, we’re doing so in different ways.

How Are We Watching?

When was the last time a sports event had your full, undivided attention? I don’t mean that you watched part of a game or even an entire game. When was the last time you watched a game start to finish without checking your phone, going on the internet, or doing another task?

I’d guess that it’s been a while. In 2019, live sports are never the only thing going on. But then again, neither is anything else. There is always something else to be watching, playing, doing, and rarely can any singular stimulus captivate someone for an extended period of time.

Often, sports are reduced to background noise. If the bases are loaded, or if a football team is in the red zone, we’ll check out what’s happening. Otherwise, the game will be on just to have something on. Sports are different than most other types of programming in that you don’t need to be actively watching — with just a glance, it’s possible to understand the situation.

The ability to have a second device handy while watching sports has changed the experience tremendously, even if just allowing someone to follow the game on social media or look up stats. But now, with the rise of streaming games (both legally and illegally), those devices are far more than just supplements. They’re becoming the experience themselves, which threatens the stability of the television industry and will have a major impact on the business of sports.

As more and more people have cut the cord in recent years and episodic series have lost favor to on-demand platforms like Netflix, live sports have kept the television industry afloat as the last major source of appointment TV. However, as the cord-cutting trend continues, particularly with the younger generations, it will be increasingly difficult for television networks to generate viewers, even with the sports programs traditionally seen as guaranteed moneymakers.

To be clear, sports will not move away from TV any time soon, and I still personally believe that rumors of the death of cable are somewhat exaggerated. However, this could lead to some very interesting developments in the next round of media rights deals.

The current television contracts for most major sports expire in the early 2020s, which means that the next few years of negotiations will set the stage for the future of sports broadcasting. Since games started being televised, TV rights deals have only increased in value. However, it’s very much up in the air if that will continue. Will decreasing ratings mean shorter and less valuable contracts, or will sports’ arguably stronger position against other types of programming which have been more affected by cord-cutting mean sports are actually more valuable?

For the first time in history, media revenue now represents the largest share of total revenue in sports, surpassing ticket sales. This makes these media rights deals incredibly important for leagues. Luckily, there is no shortage of companies looking to get involved.

Over the last few years, companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter, along with over-the-top (OTT) services like YouTube TV, Hulu, and ESPN+, have experimented with streaming live sports. It seems likely that the next round of media rights deals will include both television and streaming contracts for all the major packages to maximize revenue for the leagues and keep as many players as possible interested in moving forward. In addition, leagues will continue trying to tap into international markets to expand their reach and potential audience.

At some point, someone like Amazon might look to make a bid for exclusive rights to something like Thursday Night Football, but in the present, TV remains a far more accessible option, especially for older viewers who make up a large percentage of the NFL’s audience and may not want or be able to watch the game on another platform. We’re still probably a minimum of a few decades away from a total pivot to streaming.

But even with more ways to watch games than ever before, some sports are struggling to get people to care. The greatest thing the NFL has going for it is its ability to dominate an entire day of the week. With just 16 regular season games, every game truly matters, so fans are eager to tune into their favorite team and any other big matchups. The NBA and NHL, with 82-game schedules, and the MLB, with 162 games, are unable to generate as much hype for each game.

In our busy lives, chances are that we won’t choose to watch a game if doing so doesn’t feel essential. The NBA is in a particularly interesting situation, where a high percentage of people who consider themselves fans of the league don’t watch many games, particularly in the regular season. They’ll follow the major storylines and view highlights but be much more of a passive fan until playoff time.

The NBA has done so well at creating storylines around things like social media beef and offseason speculation that what’s happening off the court is often more interesting than what’s happening on it. Other leagues can learn a lot from the NBA’s marketing efforts. Meanwhile, the NBA is working on maximizing entertainment throughout the season, which has led to ideas such as the midseason tournament.

There’s Nothing “Instant” About Replay

In such a crowded media environment, all leagues should be focused on making their product as strong as possible. One area which receives constant criticism as a result of the evolution of technology is that of officiating and replay review.

What began in the 1960s as a way to fill time in between football snaps and show action which had previously taken place away from the ball has since been incorporated in all major sports as a way to ensure officials get the important calls right.

Over time, the use of replay has expanded in both overall scope (the types of plays that can be reviewed) and frequency. New technologies are being developed to provide more accurate camera angles and we’ve seen the addition of extra officials and off-site replay centers to aid in review and TV rules analysts to provide explanations to the viewing audience.

Despite all of these precautions, the officiating process has never been more scrutinized than today. Partially, this is because the process is still far too inefficient, causing long stoppages in play. This can halt a team’s momentum and kill the mood in big situations. Instead of celebrating after a game-winning touchdown, teams now often have to wait a few minutes to learn if the play will stand.

The other major problem comes in the form of expectations. Previously, we were forced to acknowledge that without review, some officiating mistakes would be made, as no one is perfect. However, with the emphasis that has been placed on review, both players and fans now expect perfection and feel cheated when a missed call goes against them, leading to conspiracies about outcomes being rigged.

Modern TV broadcasts allow us to see high-quality, slow-motion replays from multiple angles. This turns everyone into an expert liable to outraged at any perceived errors. And with the oftentimes ambiguous standards needed to reverse a call upon further review, situations frequently arise where fans of both teams feel confident that the call should favor them.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver believes that with the emergence of new technology, the league cannot turn the clock back on transparency. This has led them to prioritize doing everything in their power to improve officiating and publish mistakes made late in games. But at some point, it becomes a lot of work for negligible gains that seem to actually hurt the viewing experience.

Even if officiating is better than ever before, humans will always make mistakes. TV forces us to see those mistakes, and as overall accuracy improves, we get angrier and more suspicious of the errors that do occur. This leads to the expansion of review that harms pace of play without fully solving the problem. It’s an unbreakable cycle. The league can’t win.

As controversial an opinion as this may be, I believe replay review should be eliminated from sports. In its current form, not every call is allowed to be reviewed (baseball umpires are surprisingly poor at calling balls and strikes, although these decisions are unreviewable), and some sports feature limits on how many calls can be challenged or limit reviews to certain points in the game.

This system treats some calls as more important than others, a necessary evil as it’s not feasible to review every single call made in a game. But if you can’t review everything, should review really exist at all?

In theory, missed calls should go against both sides and balance out over the course of a game, much less a season. Replay review might make officiating in sports more accurate, but it doesn’t make it fairer. Eliminating it entirely would serve to restore the social contract between players and referees, who were added to be impartial adjudicators of the rules. At one time, the referee had full authority. Replay has taken that away, leading to the disparagement of game officials.

At a point in time where replay is constantly expanding, I think it should be stripped back, perhaps with the exception of tennis, where the Hawkeye system achieves near-perfection in just seconds while blending naturally into the broadcast.

We will reach a point, however, where robots can perform the job of an official better than humans without added delay. At that point, and only at that point, a sport should make the switch to robots. The Atlantic League tested having a robot umpire call balls and strikes this past season, and I would like to see Major League Baseball work to improve that technology and implement it in the coming years.

Umpires and officials in all sports will still be needed as backup as well as to help manage the game and make certain calls robots are not capable of, but certain aspects of the job could certainly be optimized. We would have to be careful, though, with how much control we give. In the NFL, for instance, there is holding on virtually every play, but we can’t penalize each one. Situations like this may also work better using human discretion.

The only reason why leagues may be hesitant to embrace automated officiating, should it be quick and more accurate than humans would be the potential backlash by fans over the potential of these robots being rigged or somehow able to hack. Even if these concerns are unfounded, the perception could be deadly.

Ethics and Cheating

Any possible way to cheat or rig a sports event marks a threat to the entire industry. Competitive integrity is taken so seriously because the core of sports lies in the idea of an uncertain outcome. Everyone plays by the same rules on an equal playing field, and the best player or team wins. Unlike other scripted forms of entertainment, anything can happen.

However, new technologies make it easier for people to gain an unfair advantage, which is perhaps the single scariest aspect of the rise of technology in sports. This was most visible in one of the biggest sports stories of 2019, the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal.

This past November, Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic broke the story that the Astros illegally stole signs during the 2017 season. According to the report, which was supported by several people who were then employed by the Astros, including pitcher Mike Fiers, the team used a camera in the outfield focused on the opposing catcher to send a live video feed to a monitor positioned in a hallway between the Astros’ dugout and clubhouse. Team employees and players would then watch the feed, attempting to decipher the catcher’s signs. Once they had done so, they would relay that information to Astros batters by banging on a trash can next to the monitor to indicate off-speed pitches. The process was nearly instantaneous, allowing batters to receive the information before the pitch was thrown.

The story blew up because the Astros won the World Series in 2017. This would mean that they cheated on the way to winning a championship. Over the following days, evidence started to pile up against the team, including a leaked email from a team executive asking scouts for help stealing signs which mentioned the potential use of a camera. On the internet, baseball fans such as Jomboy went back through recordings of Astros home games to find clearly audible banging which perfectly aligned with off-speed pitches. Rob Arthur even managed to analyze game audio to pinpoint the time the banging started (May 19th) and prove that from that point on, the Astros’ offense improved.

While it hasn’t been proven that the Astros cheated during the 2017 playoffs, it seems likely that if the strategy was effective, they wouldn’t have stopped using it altogether, but rather found a better way to decode it. To this point, there have been rumors of the Astros using varied whistles or even having players wear electronic buzzers that look like bandages to convey pitch information.

The entire scandal is insane and appears to have been known about in every level of the organization. Major League Baseball is currently conducting a wide-reaching investigation of the matter and depending on the findings and whether it extended into the 2018 and 2019 seasons, I would expect huge penalties for the team, including fines, a loss of draft picks, suspension and possible bans for coaches and front office members, and potentially even suspensions for players.

However, reports from around the league suggest that while the Astros may have pioneered the video camera technique, illegal sign-stealing is a common practice in several other MLB organizations. Notably, the Boston Red Sox were caught and fined for using an Apple Watch to steal signs during a 2017 series against the New York Yankees. The act of trying to decipher catcher signs is not new, nor is it against the rules. However, doing so through the use of technology makes it illegal, and it has become clear that there are more creative ways to do this than ever before.

The entire situation with sign-stealing around the league is highly troubling. It’s also heavily reminiscent of another huge scandal that came to light earlier in the fall when the poker world was rocked by the allegations against Mike Postle.

Postle was a regular player in the cash games broadcast live on Twitch from the Stones Gambling Hall in California. On the stream, he had earned the reputation of having godlike skills by routinely making incredible decisions that seem unfathomable to anyone with an understanding of the game on the way to winning an estimated $250,000.

Stones employee and stream commentator Veronica Brill privately voiced concerns about Postle’s play to Stones management before finally going public with the story, releasing a highlight tape of some of Postle’s most superhuman plays and contacting popular poker player and content creator Joe Ingram.

Ingram began to watch the footage and was instantly shocked by what seemed to be the greatest player he’d ever seen. But suspicions quickly mounted as Postle never made a major error while always sitting in the same seat and looking down at his phone positioned in between his legs during significant pots.

Immediately, Ingram began hosting daily livestreams where he would watch and discuss Postle’s hands while encouraging discussion on the potential cheating methods used. In a very similar way to how the internet investigated the Astros, people became hooked to the story and turned into amateur sleuths. They figured out when he started cheating and began to piece together how it was done, including how Postle used bone conduction technology in a hat to adjust to a rule preventing phone use at the table, along the way determining that someone on the stream’s production team must have been aiding him. Currently, there is a lawsuit against Postle featuring many of his opponents as the plaintiff.

Cheating in sports is nothing new. Notable examples include game rigging in the 1919 World Series and in the NBA with referee Tim Donaghy, the steroid era in baseball, and Lance Armstrong’s doping scandal. However, technology allows for more clever ways to get away with it.

Unfortunately, the incentive to cheat will always be there. The stakes are simply too high and have only increased as sports have become more lucrative. If people can cheat, they will. Technology provides the “can”, and because of that, we must always be on the lookout.

What Are the Sports and Games of the Future?

So far, we’ve discussed a variety of ways technology has already impacted and will continue to impact sports. Now, it’s time to zoom out and look at the big picture. The world is changing rapidly, and some sports are better positioned than others to adapt and succeed moving forward. Which sports will grow in popularity? Which will fall? What sports and games will we play in the future?

Before we begin, it’s worth mentioning that the sports of the future may not even exist yet. A category like esports, which has exploded in popularity so far in the 21st century and seems poised to continue to grow and break into the mainstream, is only possible because of the technology used to create the games. Who knows what will be possible in the future? Could sports utilizing virtual reality be the next big thing? Only time will tell.

As for the sports which are currently popular, though, soccer seems the safest bet to continue to be played and watched for the foreseeable future. Soccer has true global popularity that is unmatched by any other sport. For this reason, it is sometimes referred to as “the world’s game”. It is incredibly simple and accessible, requiring just a ball, yet requires such complex, precise movements, and team coordination that it seems in no danger of being taken over by robots.

The RoboCup, an annual autonomous robot soccer competition, has the stated goal of producing a team of humanoid robots that can beat the World Cup champion team by 2050, but I’m skeptical of that goal being achieved. Even if that were to occur, soccer has such a deeply rooted history and widespread appeal that I don’t think there would be much of an effect on the game.

Basketball also seems to have a strong future led by the growing global nature of the game. In terms of widespread popularity, basketball is arguably the second-most popular sport in the world. Similar to soccer, it benefits from requiring no special equipment outside of a ball and a hoop and features fast-moving action without being a full-contact sport. There is significant potential for growth of the women’s game, and the upcoming Basketball Africa League organized by the NBA and FIBA will help the sport reach a massive, relatively untapped market.

When considering the sports likely to decline in popularity down the road, the obvious starting point is football. It may be the most-watched sport in the United States today but make no mistake — football has passed its peak. The CTE findings are incredibly scary, and in an effort to survive, football will have to continue making changes to the rules to make the game safer. Some would argue that alone is tantamount to killing the game, but don’t be surprised if a professional flag football league gains support at some point.

Youth participation is declining, which may harm the overall talent pool, and younger generations increasingly seem to favor other sports. Moreover, football does not have the global reach of many other sports despite there being more international fans that one might expect. Even with the compounding threats facing football, there likely won’t be any major changes in the next 20 or 30 years due to a highly loyal existing fanbase. After that, however, it’s all up in the air.

Baseball will have to deal with its pace of play concerns, but I expect the sport to hold relatively steady moving forward. People have warned of the death of baseball for over a century, yet it’s still around, and actually had record revenues in 2019.

Generally, I also think Olympic sports, including track & field, swimming, and gymnastics will remain similar in popularity to their current state. Since the whole concept of the Olympics revolves around finding the best athletes in the world, these sports should be relatively unaffected by technology and artificial intelligence. The main concern here is steroid use.

Despite a generally strong televised product, ice hockey is positioned poorly due to heavy barriers to entry. Most people don’t grow up with the sport, and thus are unlikely to become fans later in life. From a playing perspective, it’s an expensive sport to get into, and in a world facing a climate change crisis, having a playing surface made of ice isn’t particularly ideal. Similar sports like field hockey and lacrosse could rise in popularity from being both safer and played on grass.

Combat sports like boxing and mixed martial arts are tricky. In continuing the theme, these sports have both global reach and accessibility. They also have the advantage of featuring varied strategies based on the background of each competitor. Everyone has different strengths, and since fights feature constant motion, it is impossible to be prepared for everything.

In a world so sanitized and far removed from our evolutionary past, there is something primitive and instinctual that these sports appeal to. Very few things can draw as much interest as a highly anticipated title fight, and Floyd Mayweather was the highest-paid athlete of this decade.

However, there are certainly some major safety concerns. An average of 13 boxers die in the ring each year, and we are beginning to understand the long-term effects of head injuries. Similar to the NFL, these sports could see declines in participation due to this. Additionally, cultural changes in the 21st century might make the idea of contact sports less attractive. Perhaps at no point in human history have aggression and physical domination been less valued in society than in the present. If anything, the designers of combat robots might be more appreciated, leading to a future of fighting shaped by machines in the ring.

Finally, let’s return to gambling and esports. I believe that poker and other forms of gambling including sports betting and daily fantasy sports are safer bets to succeed in the future than any individual esport. As I mentioned when discussing poker, the fact that the prize pools are generated by the players in these activities means they have more stability than many esports competitions that rely on sponsor or fan-generated prize pools. Additionally, the fact that gambling activities are open to anyone (assuming it is legal in the area and the person meets the age requirement), likely to become legalized in many states in the near future, and involve elements of luck all work in their favor.

Esports are interesting because while on an industry level the support clearly exists, technology over time has generally made the most popular games outdated within years. No esport has shown an ability to remain professionally relevant for multiple decades, and while that is partially due to the young age of the industry, the coming years will be instrumental in determining both the lifespan of a game and arguably more interesting, the maximum lifespan of a professional esports athlete, since reaction time and technical skill begin declining at a young age.

As certain sports fall and increased access to technology and resources grow the potential audience for sport in general, some sports will rise to fill the void. They may already exist, or they might be created in the future. Either way, what attributes are most important for these sports to have?

Topping the list for me is accessibility. People have to be able to play the sport. Even some of the most popular competitive video games, including League of Legends, Dota 2, and Fortnite are free to play, earning revenue through sponsorships and in-game purchases. Beyond that, people also have to be able to watch the sport. Television deals are important, but in the future and particularly for emerging sports, having free stream options may be even more important. I love how Riot Games has assumed total control of the production of most League of Legends broadcasts and streams live on popular platforms like Twitch and YouTube.

After that, having a fast-paced and aesthetically pleasing product suited for a digital world full of competing content is greatly important. The most underrated skill of all might be storytelling. There need to be stakes — we have to feel something while we’re watching. Rivalries are a great way to do this, and if you can get fans to care about teams, those rivalries can become permanent, lasting beyond individual players. At the end of the day, sports are entertainment. Those that can craft the best stories will rise to the top.

The “Unsolvable” Game

Whether it be in chess, poker, basketball, or baseball, a clear trend has emerged in the 21st century. The solving of games and subsequent implementation of analytically superior strategies has led to less interesting gameplay, particularly from the viewer’s perspective. When optimal play becomes the goal, there is less room for experimentation. This stifles diversity and creativity, leaving games dull and predictable.

However, the players should not be blamed for this turn of events. They simply act in ways that give them the best chance of winning. Changing the rules to encourage suboptimal behavior is both illogical and contrived. The problem lies within the games themselves, whose complexity is no longer sufficient when pitted against modern computers.

As long as there is a correct way to play a game, this issue will eventually occur. Instead of fighting a losing battle, what would happen if we could create a game that has no optimal strategy? I propose a new type of competition, the true sport of the future: the unsolvable game.

For the unsolvable game to even exist, it has to involve something that cannot be optimized by computers. That is the social element and the unpredictability of human behavior. Unsolvable games are social games that require logical and strategic thinking, but also the ability to communicate effectively with other people. To make bonds and garner trust. To lie and persuade. These are things that robots can’t do. Unsolvable games require their players to use the skills that make us human.

There are two main keys to unsolvable games that set them apart. First, there are external forces that prevent a player from ever having complete control of the game. In chess, if a player makes the optimal move in every situation, they are guaranteed at least a draw. Due to a combination of luck and the decisions of other players, this is not true of unsolvable games. There is no way to guarantee victory.

Second, unsolvable games lack a single dominant strategy that can be used regardless of the actions taken by opponents. While it lacks the complexity to be played seriously, rock-paper-scissors is an unsolvable game. No matter which option a player chooses to throw, there is always a counter. In these games, it is impossible to defend against every potential opposing strategy. Even if someone managed to perfect every facet of the game, that very fact would be to their disadvantage.

The best example we currently have of the unsolvable game is the reality television series “Survivor”. In the show, groups of between 16–20 people are stranded on an island and divided up into tribes. They must work together to build a shelter and get along with each other while regularly competing in challenges against the other tribe(s). Losing tribes are sent to tribal council where they must vote to eliminate one of their members from the game. In the middle of the game, the tribes are merged, and it becomes every man for themselves.

Let’s view the game through the lens of our two keys. First, there is no such thing as control in Survivor. Players are reliant on their tribemates for success in challenges, and at tribal council, everyone gets a vote. Unannounced tribe swaps can instantly change the dynamics of the game, and advantages such as immunity idols and vote steals add more hidden variables primed to shake things up. Even if one player managed to win every challenge for an entire season, the real beauty of Survivor comes in the final twist. When only two or three players remain in the game, they must face a jury of their voted-out peers who decide the winner.

Additionally, Survivor has no dominant strategy. The larger game of Survivor can be condensed into three major parts: the physical game, the mental game, and the social game. Players can be voted out for being too skilled or poor at any of them. You can be perceived as a threat for being too strong or seen as a liability to your tribe for being weak in challenges. Sometimes people are seen as too likable; other times, being an annoyance or an outcast is enough to get voted out. Smart and manipulative people are incredibly dangerous, but if you don’t form strong alliances or pick the right allies, your days might be numbered.

Every person playing the game is trying to do whatever it takes to get them closer to the end. There are countless different ways to play, but in most cases, it’s important not to be seen as too great of a threat. It’s difficult because you want to play as strong a game as possible, but that strength has to go under the radar. And, of course, you never know what other people are thinking.

Unfortunately, only a small group of people will ever get the opportunity to play Survivor. We need to find more accessible games that feature similar elements, and I think we already have with the rise of social deduction or hidden role games.

These games, which are typically played as board or card games, feature players competing either individually or on teams working to achieve competing goals. The trick is that not everyone knows what team everyone is on, or in some cases what cards or abilities they possess. Over the duration of the game, players must achieve their goals while also deducing everyone’s true identity or attempting to trick their opponents.

I believe the opportunity exists in the future for these types of social games to continue rising in popularity, perhaps even to the level of sport. One possible hiccup, however, could come from the nature of variance. With any game that features a certain level of luck and unpredictability, it is impossible for the most skilled player to win every time. Determining a champion requires an extended sample size, and even then, the relative strengths of participants may be difficult to determine. This might detract from viewer appeal. Do social deduction games have too much variance to be spectator sports?

Chess is a game purely of skill. Matches between two players may have varying results, but that comes down to who played better. I see Scrabble as a good parallel to chess in the sense that they are both mind sports with competitive circuits and highly skilled top players. The major difference between them is that Scrabble includes an element of luck with the drawing of tiles. One player could draw tiles with higher scoring potential, and neither player knows what tiles the other has. This means that even the best players routinely lose matches, although it typically evens out throughout an entire tournament.

Social deduction games are like Scrabble, except arguably more entertaining. They also completely eliminate the potential for a draw. The success of these games as sports largely depends on finding a balanced game with a strong concept and the right level of variance and then being able to construct the right narratives around it with entertaining players. Once again, sports and games are for entertainment. If we can satisfy that need by constructing games that have unlimited playability due to their unsolvable nature, we could usher in a new wave of entertainment.

Choice: The Greatest Threat to Sports

Throughout this piece, we’ve examined sports in the context of how they have been changed by technology and how they will continue to adapt to a new age. This entire argument makes one major assumption: that the sports industry will continue to be popular in the future. It’s time to call that premise into question.

Don’t worry — sports as a whole are not going to die out. However, the industry itself could be in danger of losing popularity when forced to take on its greatest threat: choice.

Entertainment is a zero-sum game. Whenever you choose to watch a certain show, there’s another show that you’re choosing not to watch. There is a limited amount of time each person can spend consuming content. With so many options available, will we really continue to rely on content that is only interesting when viewed live at a scheduled time and features an inconsistent product?

That’s sports in a nutshell. You have to watch it when it happens, or it becomes old news. However, there’s no guarantee the game will be good. It could be a blowout. Players and teams could perform poorly. Why would we waste our time on the unknown?

For the last century, sports have thrived because they provide reliable programming. We always knew when the game would be on, and we made sure to tune into it. Sports were and continue to be appointment television. Who would have thought this glorified attribute could eventually be its downfall?

Streaming services like Netflix and video-sharing platforms such as YouTube provide massive amounts of content that can be viewed at any time. You can binge-watch an entire season of a show in one day if you want to. Sporting events take place whether you’re there watching or not. Accessibility is the future — the content comes to you, whenever you’re ready.

Could we see the rise of scripted sports, made specifically for the digital world? With the outcomes knowing predetermined, the need to watch live wouldn’t be as strong, but the excitement could be maintained. If an NFL season was told in the form of a Netflix series, could we script a better story than real life can provide? Television is better at crafting narratives and controlling audience reaction than sports, and in this scenario, there is no risk of injury to human athletes. After all, the competition isn’t real.

To avoid this outcome and continue to thrive, there are important steps the sports world needs to take. Primarily, increasing access to sports, particularly at the youth level, must be made a priority. Additionally, our current sports must adapt to the digital age through changes in rules and presentation while we also work to push new sports into the mainstream and embrace trends such as esports. Lastly, it is essential that measures are taken to maintain competitive integrity and keep our sports safe, in order to create a positive environment.

The world is changing. Will sports be ready?

Connor Groel is a writer who studies sport management at the University of Texas at Austin. He also serves as editor of the Top Level Sports publication on Medium, and the host of the Connor Groel Sports podcast. You can follow Connor on Medium, Facebook, and Twitter, and view his archives at toplevelsports.net.