The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating effect on sports and sporting competitions worldwide.
Some of the effects have been evident and widely discussed. The EURO 2020 has been postponed for a full year, impacting tens of thousands of jobs and at a massive loss. The Olympics, the globe’s premiere sporting competition, have suffered an even worse fate. They have been postponed several times, and it’s still unclear when they will take place.
Some of the more insidious effects of the pandemic, however, did not get so much attention.
Non-professional sports practically stopped
This, of course, is heavily dependent on every nation’s COVID measures, and not all countries made the same decisions at the same time.
In a lot of the Western world, however, we saw much of the same thing: professional competitions eventually got up and running again (albeit with empty or conditioned stadiums), and non-professional or youth sports simply weren’t given the same chance.
It would be fastidious for the reader if we simply listed all the non-league events that were outright cancelled, so let us just give a few examples:
While all major league sports in the United States managed to resume their competitions under strict restrictions (the NBA and WNBA used a bubble, the NFL developed a number of rolling contingency plans, etc.), the NCAA outright cancelled its season for all Winter and Spring sports.
While the English Premier League swiftly returned, with empty stadiums and then gradually with people watching, so-called “non-elite” sport was entirely frozen in the UK up until March 29th 2021.
Again, things were different depending on what country you were in, but the scenario was largely thus: unless you were part of a major league, sport stopped.
Sports are an essential activity
We don’t just mean to guarantee physical fitness (though that’s a huge part of it). Sports are how we connect to each other and our communities. They are what makes us feel a part of something larger than ourselves.
Let’s take a look at how the England FA chose to divulge the list of players that will represent them in the 2020 EUROs:
This is a simple call-up video, but it was hugely successful. There’s a reason for that. It brings to the fore not the entertainment side of highly televised professional sport but what lies underneath:
Community.
Tradition.
Support.
Love.
Sport is how we build our communities. It’s the glue that keeps us together. And now that it appears successful vaccination campaigns are allowing us to reclaim our lives, we need to reclaim sport.
dotmoovs has a plan for that and is bringing AI to the table
If we are going to rebuild the place sports hold in our communities and our hearts, we need to start looking forward, not backwards. We need to figure out new and disruptive ways to ensure that sports remain as fresh and challenging as they ever were, especially when young people (who benefit so much from it) have just spent a whole year locked inside, dedicating their time to other, digital, forms of competition and challenge.
We need to make digital work for sports.
dotmoovs is building an AI sports challenge platform that will use the power of crypto and blockchain. Whether you’re a sports lover or a pro, we will be using NFTs and other high-end technology to improve and rethink your performance.
We will allow you to invest in yourself, to believe on your own performance according to whatever goals and challenges you set. You will be able to challenge friends, competitors, adversaries. You will be able to define how far you want to push yourself.
And you will be able to win.
Whenever a challenge is completed, the winner will take home real rewards, not just a high score on a gamercard.
We are changing the way the world does sports.
MOOV with us!
