How Technology is Transcending the Reality of Sports
The evolution of sport is a never-ending topic of conversation. Every broken record or generational talent hedges on the debate of whether preceding athletes could have accomplished the same thing had they been provided the futuristic advantages of today. Recently, science and technology supporting athletes has taken another groundbreaking leap with the introduction of virtual reality, simulation, and artificial intelligence into the development, training, and monitoring of professional athletes across multiple sports. The question now is will this technology be ineffective, or instead, allow athletes across the globe to expand the realm of possible in sports?
VR Takeover
Rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels of the Washington Commanders has been creating a buzz amongst football fans globally by emerging from a stellar college career and leading the Commanders to their best start to a season in nearly 30 years. Interestingly, a major part of Daniels training is conducted through VR – every morning he puts on VR goggles and simulates plays at 20 times the speed seen on the field. This training method is not new to Daniels either, who used the technology all throughout his last year at LSU when he won the Heisman trophy for his outstanding season. The team could simulate their playbook or even opponents rushing in VR, allowing Daniels to memorize plays at a much faster pace, and develop a heightened knowledge of where players were on the field through unlimited repetition. Ultimately, Daniels success aside, what benefits does this method of player development truly bring to all athletes?
One evident advantage of the technology is its accessibility. Athletes can train from anywhere, without the need for preparation, transportation, or any resources aside from a VR headset. Additionally, VR technology provides athletes with an environment that avoids the physical wear and tear associated with traditional training methods and practice. This is most impactful for athletes like Jayden Daniels, who partake in high contact sports like football. VR can also be used to support athletes recovering from injury. Virtual scenarios can be tailored towards the recovery needs of an athlete, allowing them to follow specific movements and exercises in a risk-free environment, minimizing their recovery time. NBA player Gordon Hayward used VR in this way, simulating basketball plays and scenarios he would normally see on the court at a slower rate to allow himself to recover from a knee injury. Moreover, VR boosts the psychological preparation of athletes by allowing them to simulate high pressure scenarios such as the hostile stadiums of opposing teams, preparing them for crucial moments. By becoming resilient in challenging situations using VR technology, athletes can perform at the highest level in the toughest moments, such as a game winning free throw in basketball or the break point of a tennis match. Finally, athletes training in VR can receive instantaneous feedback and analysis on their performance, allowing them to identify weak points in their game and measure their progress. Moreover, coaches can track biometric data during training – such as a player's heart rate – to get a better understanding of how their athletes can perform physically in various game scenarios.
The table below shows the results of a sports science journal that investigated the impacts of VR head mounted display (HMD), and cave automatic virtual reality (CAVE), on soccer players performance during their training programs. The study found that the decision making and cognitive ability and skills of players who used virtual reality in training were significantly improved.
The Impact of AI
Virtual reality is not the only technology emerging as a differentiator in sports; artificial intelligence has started to play a key role in taking players to the next level while changing the way games unfold. Professional sports organizations have begun to adopt AI as a means of monitoring player health and injuries and conducting performance analysis. The biggest development of AI in sports stems from the NFL’s partnership with Amazon to create the ‘Digital Athlete’, a simulation model that uses AI and machine learning to replicate football plays of all types. The Digital Athlete will allow NFL teams to improve treatment of players and even predict future injuries. Two NFL organizations paving the way for AI adoption are the Houston Texans and Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys are using The Digital Athlete to analyze player performance and improve training, while the Texans are using machine learning to analyze game footage and gain a competitive edge in future rematches with insights AI provides.
Furthermore, AI is impacting the way sports games are being officiated. In FIFA, the introduction of a Video Assistant Referee (VAR) has sent waves of changes through the soccer world. VAR can make 100% accurate officiating decisions by analyzing video footage in real time, reducing human error and improving overall fairness in soccer matches. Additionally, AI algorithms are used in Wimbledon tennis matches to provide constant performance analytics and winning odds of players based on points throughout the match, as a means of increasing viewer engagement and interest. Ultimately, AI in sports is becoming a significant industry, with a market value expected to total $6.69 billion by 2028.
Caution in VR and AI Advancements
Despite the many benefits these technological advancements bring to sports, there are potential drawbacks of integrating them into athlete training and game officiating. Integrating AI into athletic development programs comes at a very high cost; the equipment can range from anywhere between $50,000 to $150,000, making it a financial burden for sports institutions. Furthermore, working in virtual reality removes the important aspect of physicality in training, which in many ways is integral to player development. Similarly, VR training isolates an athlete from their teammates, reducing the group's dynamics and overall teamwork. Motion sickness and mental exhaustion are also potential side effects of the overuse of virtual reality in training.
AI integration in sports comes with its own set of cons. Athletes whose behavior and performance are tracked and stored by AI algorithms face privacy and security concerns, as this personal information could be vulnerable to breaches. Additionally, AI’s dependance on data to make decisions about athletes' performance could lead to errors if there is even a minor flaw in the statistics being gathered for analysis. Finally, though AI officiating may be more accurate than a human, this does not mean it is necessarily more ‘fair’; human error has been a part of sports officiating for centuries. To change it in today's sports is in some ways jeopardizing tradition and history. Would AI have missed Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ in FIFA’s 1986 World Cup quarter final? Absolutely not.
A New Age
Ultimately, as technology such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality become increasingly used in sports, athletes will develop new skills, matches will have unforeseen conclusions, and teams will continue to invest millions into their technological advancements. Fans and organizations should appreciate the new levels of entertainment and meaning these changes bring to sports but must not allow them to overshadow and erase the generations of tradition and history that came before.