A vision of sport in 2050: robot leagues, chips in brains and players in their 50s | Sean Ingle

Many experts’ predictions for the next 25 years may seem outlandish but so did much of what has happened since 1999

Back in 1997, artificial intelligence and robotics experts in Japan came up with an intriguing challenge. Could anyone, they asked, build a humanoid football team capable of beating the World Cup winners by the middle of the 21st century? It sounded more than a little out there. In truth, it still does. Yet when it comes to forecasting the future of sport, it serves as a useful lodestar. Before we know it the outlandish will become the new normal.

Why am I so confident? Well, over the past few days I’ve been speaking to experts about how sport may look in 2050. And given that I recently wrote about how accurate – or not – predictions made at the dawn of the millennium turned out to be, I felt it was only fair to put my money where my mouth is too.

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