What exactly defines phygital sports as a new competitive discipline?
Phygital sport is a genuinely new kind of competition, one that brings digital gameplay and physical skill together rather than treating them as separate worlds. For example, in Phygital Basketball, teams first face off in a basketball video game, building a score that carries directly into a fast-paced 2v2 match on the court. The contest continues seamlessly across both stages, with the final result decided by the combined performance.
What makes phygital sport distinctive is that success depends on performance across both environments. It creates a new type of competitive athlete, where physical ability, digital skills, strategy and adaptability all matter.
How does the World Phygital Community position itself as the global body for phygital sports?
The WPC provides the global governance framework for phygital sport, bringing together organizations that are developing the sport in their countries.
As a non-profit organization, WPC provides a global framework for the growth of phygital sport, supporting its members in developing participation, organizing recognized competitions and creating opportunities for athletes and clubs.
Today, WPC represents 120 members across 116 countries and six continents, giving it a truly global footprint and connecting organizations developing phygital sport around the world.
The Community members organize Phygital Origins and Phygital Rivals tournaments, creating a structured pathway through the WPC ranking and qualification system towards the Games of the Future.
What core responsibilities does WPC hold in shaping and standardizing phygital sports worldwide?
The World Phygital Community is responsible for establishing a framework that enables phygital sport to develop consistently worldwide. This includes setting the rules and regulations that members follow when organizing ranked tournaments for the four core disciplines – Phygital Football, Phygital Basketball, Phygital Dancing and Phygital Shooter, helping ensure the same standards are applied across different countries and regions.
The WPC also oversees the governance framework for our global membership, setting out the responsibilities and requirements members are expected to meet as part of membership.
Together, these responsibilities help create a consistent global structure while allowing phygital sport to continue growing across different markets. The objective is not to make every market identical, but to ensure that wherever phygital sport is played, athletes and clubs can compete within a trusted and consistent sporting framework.
Why is the combination of physical sport and digital gaming resonating so strongly with younger audiences?
Gaming and sport are already part of everyday life for many younger audiences, so bringing the two together feels like a natural evolution.
Younger generations have grown up moving between physical and digital environments. They might play football or basketball with friends and compete in video games later that same day. Phygital sport brings those interests into a single competitive format rather than treating them as separate worlds.
At the Games of the Future 2025, Ipsos-verified data showed that 47.8% of viewers were under 25, highlighting the format’s strong appeal among younger audiences. It also creates a different type of athlete. Competitors need to perform both digitally and physically, with success depending on their combined performance across both stages. That gives younger audiences something familiar, but in a format they have not traditionally seen in sport.
This is why phygital sport has the potential to resonate so strongly with a generation whose sporting and digital interests increasingly overlap.
Where do you see the biggest growth opportunities for phygital sports in the next few years?
I believe one of the biggest opportunities is at the grassroots level, introducing young people to the sport early and building a stronger pipeline of future athletes.
WPC members are already demonstrating that potential. For example, more than 30 schools participated in the Phygital School Games initiative in Guatemala, while in Colombia, Phygital Dancing has been introduced to 100 students through a dedicated competition and featured in a wider school program reaching more than 15,000 teenagers.
Some participants and winners from these programs attended GOTF 2026, giving them the opportunity to see where the sport could take them.
Starting at the school level means young people can develop their physical and digital skills over several years. As these initiatives expand, we can build a new generation of experienced phygital athletes with a clear route into qualifying tournaments and ultimately the Games of the Future.
How can phygital sports bring together traditional athletes, gamers and fans into one ecosystem?
Phygital sport creates a common competitive environment for people who have traditionally engaged with sport and gaming separately. Athletes and gamers can bring their existing strengths, but to succeed, they need to develop skills across both the physical and digital elements.
We are already seeing traditional sports organizations embrace this opportunity. Established sports organizations such as Peñarol from Uruguay and Argentina-based Boca Juniors, as well as Valencia Basket from Spain, have participated in phygital sport, bringing their sporting heritage and existing fanbases into a new competitive format.
For fans, that creates an important crossover. Supporters can follow clubs they already know into phygital competition and discover its digital element, while gaming and esports audiences are introduced to the physical side of the sport.
That is where I see one of the great opportunities for phygital sport: creating a common ecosystem where traditional sport, gaming and digital entertainment can reinforce each other rather than compete for the same audiences.
What role does esports play within the broader phygital sports movement?
Esports is an important part of the wider phygital ecosystem, but phygital sport is broader than esports alone.
First, it forms the digital side of phygital disciplines. In disciplines such as Phygital Football, Phygital Basketball and Phygital Shooter, athletes compete in a video game and on a physical stage, with performance across both determining the outcome. This means gaming ability, strategy and digital skills are fundamental to succeeding as a phygital athlete.
Second, Games of the Future also includes standalone esports disciplines. At GOTF 2026, these included MOBA PC (Dota 2), MOBA Mobile (Mobile Legends: Bang Bang) and Battle Royale (PUBG: BATTLEGROUND), where athletes competed entirely within the digital environment.
Esports therefore has a unique position within the ecosystem. It is both a core component of phygital competition and a major competitive category in its own right, bringing established esports athletes, clubs and audiences into Games of the Future.
Why is esports now considered a major and fast-growing pillar of global sport?
Esports has developed into a major global industry, with professional athletes, clubs, international competitions and broadcasters, supported by a large and highly engaged global audience. The scale of esports is also evident in major tournaments worldwide, which now attract significant audiences, prize pools, and international participation.
Esports growth is also reflected in the scale of international competition and its ability to reach audiences across both traditional broadcasting and digital platforms. Games of the Future 2026 brought together more than 800 participants from over 50 nationalities, with the event distributed internationally through a combination of media rights partners, community streamers and digital channels.
For me, this demonstrates something important: sport audiences are no longer defined by a single platform or a single way of consuming competition. Esports is helping to expand that sporting ecosystem, and phygital sport sits naturally at the intersection of these evolving audiences.
While these figures represent Games of the Future as a whole, esports is central to the event, both through standalone esports disciplines and as the digital component of phygital competition.
