The sports industry and years that end in 2 ... what will 2022 bring?

As all Tottenham fans of a certain vintage know, there was a song back in the day about how it was "lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one." As 2021 draws to a close, I find myself wondering if it will once again be impactful for the sports industry when the year ends in two. It doesn't scan quite as well, I appreciate ...

The two events which have most shaped the sports industry in the UK in my lifetime came in years that ended in that number: the advent of the Premier League in 1992 and the London Olympics in 2012. I, and many like me, would've had very different careers if those two things had not taken place.

1992 was the year I left school. The launch of the Premier League that summer (detailed in an excellent recent BBC documentary) sent shockwaves through the sports industry. Along with the widespread adoption of the internet which roughly coincided with the rise of the new league, it would ultimately create an entirely new sports industry around itself.

Then 2012 happened and everything changed again. The investment in, and consideration of, sports other than football made our industry deeper and broader. It brought new, mainstream audiences back to live sports in a way perhaps not seen in the UK since World Cup 1990 and Euro 96, and not seen for a non-football event in, well, maybe forever.

It created new stars who to this day continue to represent the best of us - like Laura and Jason Kenny who, two weeks ago, spoke on stage at an event I attended, and reminded me of how proud we should be of people like those two.

Of course, as London 2012 recedes by one whole decade in our rearview mirror, there's a danger that football once again dominates our landscape to the exclusion of other sports. Which is not to say that football can't also make us proud - Marcus Rashford continues to be living, breathing proof of its unrivalled power to change society for the better - but more that we need balance across the sporting landscape to inspire as many people as possible to find a sport that suits them.

Which brings us to 2022.

We'll all be looking forward to a Commonwealth Games on home soil, in Birmingham, and I would love to see England Netball repeat its heroics from 2018. If the Roses do it again, you can be sure we'll be ready to capitalise on digital, as we were in 2018 when we utilised Google Posts to drive people who searched for England Netball after that victory towards the Session Finder page, which then saw a 2000% increase in month-on-month visits, followed by lots of people telling us they'd booked a session and returned to the sport.

In football, my hope is that the 2021-22 domestic season stays as unaffected by Covid as possible, allowing us to get the 2022-23 season started on time, given the pause we'll need for a World Cup (excitingly in my view, a pre-Christmas World Cup!) where I would personally love to see Gareth Southgate's England take that last step, having been semi-finalists and then losing finalists at the last two men's tournaments. Closer to home, it's to be hoped that the idiots who shamed us all during the Euro, in-person at Wembley or online when the young players who missed penalties were sent abuse, are not allowed to have any part of the story that unfolds.

However, I wonder if the thing that happens in 2022, which we'll come to look back on as having changed the sports industry will, in fact, be a digital revolution. Specifically, the move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, a new era of the internet.

I wrote about what Web 3.0 will be, and what it will mean for the industry, in SportBusiness last month. I'm excited by the possibilities it will create for the global sports industry to reach and engage more fans, and to find new revenue streams which in turn will create the environment for grassroots and professional sports to flourish.

It's possible that I'm all misty-eyed because 20 years ago this year I joined the BBC, 10 years ago this month I resigned from the BBC to join Twitter, and 5 years ago this month I left Twitter, before joining Seven League. As of this month, I've now worked for Seven League for longer than I spent at Twitter, the last year-and-a-half of which have been as CEO. In other words, lots of self-indulgent milestones around this time, so thanks for bearing with me ...

I'm incredibly excited by what we're building at Seven League, as part of IMG. The recent hire of Bindi Ghai as VP to lead our work on digital commercialisation for clients was a major step as we roll out a full, end-to-end service for the industry.

We're well set to lead the sports industry through the inevitable changes that will come with Web 3.0, which will be the biggest shift in consumer use of digital in a generation. Maybe we'll come to look back on 2022 as the year that Web 3.0 really kicked in, or maybe 2022 will be known for another seismic event in the sports industry.

Either way, we're ready, and I'm excited for it. Bring it on.