How 5G Networks Can Improve the Future of Sports

Another area I’d like to talk about is the emergence of 5G networks. When wireless signals are transmitted over the 5G network, speed and reliability will be greatly increased. 5G network uses higher radio frequencies, which gives it a much larger capacity to move data quickly, and the high frequencies will also be able to support more than 1,000 more devices per meter than what 4G supports today.

5G can beam large volumes of data to a large number of devices with really high precision. Sports management education expounds on how this differs from 4G. It allows for the internet of things, or IoT, to be used in a way that is not possible under 4G. For example, a coach on the sidelines can have every one of his players and sports management staff connected to wearable devices and monitor them all in real-time. Whether it’s heart rate or hydration levels, or other important data that will translate into fatigue factors.

When you look at all the devices that can be wired, 5G is an enormous asset to connect all these devices. In fact, for us personally, it can connect our thermostat, door locks, our car, and any other devices. This is what 5G can do for us off the field. Online sports management education explains that the capacity for 5G is about 20 times greater than that of 4G, which has huge implications for streaming high def video.

You won’t need to worry about experiencing buffering on the 5G network or latency, which is the time between when an event is transmitted to when it actually reaches the consumer. This is a big deal for sports betting in-game bets where things happen like, is the player going to make or miss his free throw. This type of bettor requires very low latency in the broadcast, meaning a quick response, so 5G is going to be a boon to global sports betting and opens up many more possibilities for bets like this.

How a Career in Food Lead Me to Work in Sports Stadiums

My career in food first started when I attended the Restaurant School of Philadelphia. From there, I went to work in sports for the Cleveland Indians baseball team. Then I worked for Delaware North. At that time, Delaware North tasked me with continuing education to get my Pro-chef Certification and my Certified Chef de Cuisine Certification.

Options for Chefs as Students of Online Sports Management Education

Once I passed those tests at the Culinary Institute of America, I transferred to the San Diego Padre baseball team. At that point, I realized that I wanted to stay in sports, and there was so much opportunity in global sports stadiums and arenas. There are so many options for chefs in sports management. I thought it was much better action than just being a restaurant chef or a hotel chef, where they never close and stuff like that.

Grabbed by a Hands-on Sports Management Education

At that point, the sports industry grabbed me. From there, I went to the Philadelphia Eagles football team and came to work here at MetLife Stadium. It’s been six great years of working in food.

Achieving Authentic Fan Engagement Through Sports Management

Authenticity is key to any market segment, global sports included. Online sports management education tells us, if you’re going to market towards a particular group of individuals, if you’re going to segment a given group, then you have to ensure that you’re doing it authentically. If you are coming at it from a marketing perspective and you’re throwing out a message that you think only they will understand from your own perspective, not only are you going to be in danger of not properly communicating with this segment, but you could be in danger of perhaps offending this group.

A famous example or a series of examples used within sports management education, speaks of an incident perhaps about 10 or 15 years ago, where they had the whole concept of “shrink it and pink it.” This was a group of male marketers who just assumed that female consumers would like anything small and pink. Without interacting with this segment, they just made it smaller and they made it pink, assuming that female sports fans would like any given product that was small and pink. As we know, that’s not the truth.

All female consumers are definitely not all the same and they’re not all going to prefer anything that is small and/or pink. Not only are you not properly communicating with this given segment, but, in fact, you could be in danger of offending them. A lot of females were up in arms over these “shrink it and pink it campaigns.” It was the idea that, “They don’t get me, and this is in fact the opposite of what I like. If you’ve shown, on a continual basis, to not understand my preferences, then why would I want to continually consume with you in the future if it’s been clearly understood that you don’t understand me.”

Analyzing Sports Analytics via Sports Management Education

Global sports analytics is integrating the new data and information that exists today in abundant form into different decision processes, be it for on the field of play or in the C-suite for the sales and marketing team. Today, sports analytics is so critical to decision processes. We have an explosion of information because of different data-capture devices and technologies that are out there. Anyone who’s going to work in the sports environment today or in sports management needs to understand how to incorporate that information into decision processes.

One of the things sports analytics does is it helps increase the probability of a successful decision. Business is all about making decision after decision to drive revenue, to reduce costs, to get the best players on the field. When you look at it that way, you realize that you can’t just do that all from instincts and intuition. Instincts and intuition count for something, but also you’ve got to be able to employ data and information to generate insights.

Our online Sports Management Education course looks deeper into understanding sports analytics and its relationship to sports management.

Athletics Should Bring Us Together, Not Separate Us

Sports can serve as one of the best areas to be able to boost self-confidence and to develop a sense of self-worth that can last a lifetime. Granted, this requires a strong support system and a safe space to fail. You need to have someone there who’s going to be constructively critical when you’re making mistakes but also make it clear that they believe in your ability to improve. Without that, sports run the risk of becoming a venue for developing a fear of failure, especially if someone is all over you, beating you down every time you do something wrong.

Sports are a great platform to reflect on and also reinforce issues of equality in society. When we have categories in a sport that separate people based on age, or weight, or gender, we may be making statements about the way people should be separated in the world. Ultimately, it should be all about fairness. If we don’t have categories that promote fairness, then why should we have categories at all?

As an example, there are certain sports where women compete just as strongly as men, whether it be sailing, or equestrian, or ultra-distance swimming or running. However, sometimes in these sporting events, men and women are still separated. This is simply a relic of historic sexism. And if there are changes to be made that can be better reflective of an inclusive culture, then we should make those changes. It may be time that we don’t think about gender in the biological or traditional sense, but we instead think of it as the way that an individual chooses to identify.

When it comes to creating categories for track and field, it should be based on things that are more specific. If we have the technology to determine how biology influences one’s ability to compete at different levels, then perhaps that should be the standard for how we separate people into different categories.

Generally, when we think about sports, we think of them as being a great avenue to improving health and fitness—and this is true. But in certain ways, it can also cross a line. One example of this is either adults pushing themselves too hard or children getting pushed too hard, and they end up developing injuries from overuse. Another issue that’s occurring today is this popular notion of self-quantification. When people are all wearing Apple watches and Fitbits all the time, it can potentially lead to losing the notion of what it means to be fit and healthy. Instead, we’re chalking up our value to a number.

This can be a problem, but if we’re able to separate ourselves from these arbitrary quantifications of our steps, our heart rate, and these competitions and put the emphasis back on just getting out there to play, be physical, and connect with other individuals, we will be better off as people. Keeping this in check is something that we as a society really need to keep an eye on as technology becomes more and more pervasive.

Online sports management education allows you to learn more about the impact of technology on athletics, as well as concepts regarding sports management and global sports. It’s also a convenient, effective way to gain your sports management education.

Bandwidth Speed and Sports Data

One of the really important developments in sports technology and innovation is 5G wireless bandwidth. This allows for exciting new aspects of sports management that can be learned in sports management education or online sports management education.

Think of it this way: Fifth-generation wireless is like a 100-lane highway. It’s able to move mounds of data faster than you ever dreamed before. It’s dramatically faster than 4G.

For example, a movie that would have taken six minutes to download in 4G could now be downloaded in less than 10 seconds in 5G. The better news is that it only consumes 10% of the battery power that 4G would consume for downloading that movie.

This network speed affects IoT, Internet of Things, which is essentially wired devices that connect to the internet.

When we have a 5G network, we’re able to move the information and data that comes from wireless, wearable devices so quickly that it can be delivered to not only the coach on the sidelines who’s watching and evaluating the players practice, but also directly to the fans because of the bandwidth capability. The impact this could have on global sports is astronomical.

It’s an exciting time when we’re beginning to see all sorts of data and information about what’s going on in the field of play, and it’s really largely made responsible by the combination of wireless devices, the Internet of Things, and the 5G network.

Benefits of Kids Sports Participation

Sports can be a valuable developmental tool for youth. Many young people today in the US and all over the world participate in sports. Of course, it has physical health benefits.

It gets our young people off the couch, out of the house, and engaging in physical activity. In the long run, it can do many positive things, including mitigating insurance costs and health care costs over the long term.

Self Esteem Building

Beyond all that, it does a lot more. It does something within the individual themselves, perhaps building self-esteem. Also, teaching what it’s like to be part of something bigger than yourself. Particularly in team sports, that comes through loud and clear.

There are many ways in which sports can play a key role in youth development. However, it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes parents can be overzealous, and essentially hijack the sport from their child, which changes the context.

Parents can become obsessed with the possibility of their kid becoming a star athlete in their community, or in college, and maybe one day professionally. But the chance of that kid making it all the way to the professional level is probably lower than 1% for most sports.

So what is the product of these parents putting so much pressure on their kids to perform for such an unrealistic goal? We see kids losing interest in the sport before they even get to middle school, certainly before they get to high school.

Participation Dropping

Participation rates are dropping because there’s so much focus on those few star performers. Then, even with that pool of star performers, how many of them are going to make it? Not a lot.

We have this system that tells kids at an early age to focus on one sport, whether it’s baseball, basketball, or football, to make sure they’re good enough when it comes time to play at the professional level if they ever actually get there.

Then what happens? They end up hurting themselves before they even get to a serious level, before they even get to high school. They blow out their shoulder by pitching too much. They’ve had too many cumulative concussions by getting hit repeatedly on the football field, or they burn out emotionally.

Sports Management Should Put the Focus Back on Kids Having Fun

It’s not fun anymore. What happens to kids when the fun is taken out of this forum that’s designed for their emotional growth and for their social world? They abandon it. They don’t want to do it anymore.

We need to make sure we can take the power away from parents and give it back to the kids. We need to ask, “What is this about”? It’s about the kids. It’s not about your dreams, mom and dad, which are unrealistic and unfair.

The Future is Now: New and Developing Gaming Technologies: The future of gaming: VR/VR/ER

People have been talking about virtual reality forever. Dan Shefelman remembers a time when it was going to be huge in the ‘90s, but it never reached the heights people predicted it would at the time.
Maria Hwano details what virtual reality is and why, despite not taking over as people thought it would, it continues to capture the imagination:
“If I had one or two words that I have to explain it, it’s just the experiential aspect of virtual reality. You’re actually living it. You feel it. You’re experiencing something that actually isn’t real life in your world.”
The way Hwano sees it, people still love talking about it. There have been multiple booms that at times have even felt like fads. Virtual reality has even been talked about in education
“As a computer scientist, VR is brought up a lot,” explains Hwano. “People ask me about it. People love talking about it. People like to ask opinions about what’s going to happen with virtual reality. It’s a very interesting question.”
As exciting as VR technology is, Maria Hwano believes people need to understand where the technology is currently, and what its evolutionary process might look like.
“A long time ago, when the computer keyboard was not a thing, it used to be a one-to-one input. It was on a piano and a sticker was put on it. And a signal was given to do input. It wasn’t until 10 years later that somebody created the keyboard that we take for granted right now. That’s how long it takes to make a keyboard. So you can only imagine how much we don’t know about the potential VR might have.”
Still, the future of virtual reality is full of possibilities, especially when it comes to augmented reality.
“Augmented reality is basically taking what’s around you and – through a phone or some device – and placing something there virtually so you can see it on the phone,” Dan Shefelman says. “It’s an illusion, obviously, but it’s using the environment around you and putting assets in it. . .You’re using the space that you’re in.”

The Future of Gaming: Coming Technologies

In the future, technology will be embedded in everything. So, we’re not going to have devices, like a camera and laptop. Instead, when we go see a movie, like Iron Man, it is just going to be embedded in our environment. d we can expect the games to go in a similar direction. Having and playing a console or PC will be obsolete. As we are walking down the street, elements of games will be part of our life.
Gamification
When games are simply embedded in our lives, it becomes gamification. A similar event occurred in a Nordic country, where they put pianos on steps at a train station. People were encouraged to walk more while also playing tunes. People took the stairs more often because it was entertaining.
The same thing could happen in gaming. We will not actually be playing a game, but it will be embedded and embodied into whatever we do in our lifestyle. We are just living inside a game.
The Evolution of Technology
Technology is like an interactive language that has already existed, that may not adapt to new forms. “So, if you look at early television,” Jessica Hammer says, “it’s radio plays where you can see the actors. And I think the same thing happens with games.” As gaming technologies advance and develop, people will need to understand new kinds of experiences.
We are still grappling with AR and VR as new kinds of gaming technologies. Video game designers are still trying to figure out what makes virtual reality games unique experiences beyond just taking existing games and porting them to a virtual reality setting. To Jessica, that is one of the fascinating things about doing game research in the context of computer science. It is less about changing the technology inside the game but rather the way games are played, discussed, consumed, and engaged with.

The Future of Gaming: The Future of Gamers is Diverse

”I think the future of gaming is having different voices, colors, shapes, and bodies as much as possible,” Says Anya Combs. “I think we as a nation, especially in the US, are changing pretty drastically, so it would make sense that games, art, and entertainment would follow suit with that.”

“When we’re talking about inclusion when it comes to games themselves and the representation that we see within characters, there are two things we started to see. We started to see that the representation that we’ve seen in video games have become multilayered, and they’re not as stereotypical,” Erin Simon explains.

For example, if you look at the first Street Fighter, those characters, especially ones who are people of color, they’re very stereotypical and borderline racist. The companies behind these games are starting to understand that can’t be the representation that you see. They started to make some of these characters that people found problematic more complex. They gave them have layers of different personalities especially within the storyline. We’re starting to see that.

Customization of characters has been another big one. Allowing people to pick the skins and giving people options to pick if they want to play as a male or a female. Within the options of playing as a male or a female, they’re able to pick the skin color that they would like, the hair, and have that option to mold and build a character that they feel could look like them. Of course, there are some bumps along the road with that.

“As we know, African Americans are very underrepresented in the game industry- especially from an ownership perspective. The last statistics that came out and only 3% of developers are African American. The issue with that is without that representation, we’re not able to move the industry forward,” Says Ahmed Abdullah.

“We’ve seen this in other industries, as well. You go back in history, and every time we’re able to open up who actually gets into that industry, we get different games. We get different types of content.”

That’s happened in sports, where African Americans excelled very well. It’s also now happening in the entertainment industry. You’re now seeing the movie industry starting to take in people of color for more of a directing role. Now you’re seeing different, unique content. It only helps everybody.

It’s very important for African Americans to really take in this industry because there’s so much more to grow here. It’s going to happen, and it starts with you. It starts with all the people that are young to go ahead and make sure this next generation can really dive into this industry.