FIFA World Cup innovations for 2022

Quite traditionally for every big sport event through the years innovations are announced in various areas. The upcoming Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup is no exception, ranging from new football stata and apps, officiating tech, fan engagement initiatives.

Let's have a look at what I have found online and from FIFA themselves with a promise to come back in February and check how it all performed.

Data & Stats

FIFA being at the center of the football ecosystem, the core product focus is always about data and statistics, with some surprises.

FIFA Player App

This is in my view the coolest thing announced. I was speculating around the rights of athletes in the Olympics to have immediate access to their own performance video and data, and this is exactly in that space. Bravi!

Semi-automated offside and ball sensors

This is something that the FIFA referees have been waiting for a while, they definitively want to avoid a World Cup final to be decided by a dubious offside. Quite complex technology still mostly based on video recognition, that has made huge progress during these last years, but skeleton tracking is not joke. Will be fascinating to observe it in action.

See also (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEPKAeGzwPU)

VAR

Love it or hate it, it's here to stay and be improved. Technology is kind of average here but the human and workflow aspect is the big success factor in this space.

Goal Line Technology

Commodity. Useful only a few times in a tournament. would you remove it, though? I would not.

Football Data Dashboards

As a data freak, I am immediately drawn by anything that looks like a dashboard. Will observe this space to see which real innovations are introduced.

Fan engagement & Content

I am quite curious to see how football storytelling will evolve.

Digital, Social, Creators and Big Tech

Update: comprehensive summary by FIFA themselves on all digital efforts

FIFA

On the own and operated side everything seems to be hosted under the new FIFA+ brand, an area that has seen a growing focus from the FIFA side, let's wait and see what innovations they will introduce on the web and apps space, in the past each edition has seen new storytelling format and US for live match centre and football stats.

Google

A platform-wide effort from Google also for this edition with new features.

See here: (https://blog.google/products/search/fifa-world-cup-2022/)

Apple

Another example of how sport, football lives now in a wider entertainment space and can thrive also because of that. Will be curious to see these innovative storytelling formats for fan experience develop.

Snapchat

Directly from Snap's Kahlen Macaulay latest tech launch of interest, ability to try on kits in AR simply rendered from a photograph and more!

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/16/snapchat-gears-up-for-the-fifa-world-cup-with-new-ar-experiences-filters-and-more/

Meta safe

Luis Enrique on twitch

It does not get more direct than this, from coach to fans! Another one to follow during these next months.

FIFA and Hisense

Special sponsor initiative for video and FIFA+.

NFT and collectibles

Even if we maybe in an NFT/crypto/metaverse winter, we can't avoid initiative in those spaces and in gaming too.

FIFA+ Collect

Powered by Algorand, FIFA+ Collect will be accessible on FIFA+, the mobile app that produces livestreams of matches, interactive games, news, tournament data and original content. Users of FIFA+ Collect are asked to register on the FIFA+ app to gain information on the upcoming digital collectibles, with updates to be provided as of now in English, French and Spanish.

FIFA also licenses to others in the gaming space

Metaverse

FIFA World on Roblox is the most visible initiative around anything metaverse-like for now. Roblox with its 202M Monthly Active users, 55M daily active, almost 10M developers, 80% users below 16 years old is the place to be.

Some criticism from the Guardian

More games

Event Management

Socio-political Aspects

It's impossible to avoid considering also the many socio-political aspects that have grown around this World Cup, starting from the selection of Qatar as the host, lack of human rights respect, LGTBQ+ issues, playing a World Cup in winter and more. We have seen a new concept being created in advertising, un-sponsoring.

Inspired by Emanuela Perinetti Casoni article (in Italian)

Anything to add? Please DM me for anything I may have missed.