No standing still as innovation and change beckon in new sporting year

Reuters,London, Dec. 26: As a jam-packed sporting year featuring a much-praised Olympic Games and four continental football tournaments rolls to a close it is tempting to expect that 2025 will be a more sedate one.

But that is not the nature of a sports industry continually evolving to sate the thirst of a demanding public that seemingly can never get enough of their chosen product.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that tradition and maintaining the status quo no longer cuts it in a competitive world intent on wringing every dollar out of sporting endeavour.

Novel ways of delivering sport to a high-tech generation are now paramount and the Christmas decorations will hardly have come down before golf, arguably the most conservative of all sports, welcomes the aptly-named Tomorrow's Golf League (TGL) which kicks off in Palm Beach in January.

Created by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, the new made-for-TV indoor team format featuring state-of-the-art golf simulators and shot clocks resembles a cross between an arcade game and crazy golf. However, the world's best are on board for a venture designed to hook a generation of fans who no longer have the time or patience to watch five-hour rounds.

"The most interesting and fun aspect about TGL is the fact that it is an arena and you get to see us up close and personal," American Wyndham Clark said. "We're mic'd up, you'll see our personalities. It's almost a totally different sport."

Golf ended the year with a contrived Showdown between PGA Tour players and those of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit in Las Vegas. Looking ahead, in September, American Ryder Cup players will, for the first time, be paid to take on Europe when the bi-annual clash takes place in New York.

Big changes

Other sports will also see big changes in 2025 -- a year lacking the biggest global showpiece events but still busy.

Football, in which its marquee names rarely have time to draw breath, will add to the load with an expanded 32-team Fifa Club World Cup in June and July in the United States.

While it has many critics, it will certainly be a tournament that, unlike previous editions, will be hard to ignore.

Tennis, too, is moving into the future at pace with tradition making way for innovation and the need to capture market share in an increasingly saturated landscape. Who would ever have thought Wimbledon, of all places, would get rid of line judges from its lawns in favour of Hawkeye technology and computer-generated voices. But that is what fans will witness at the All England Club this year.

In athletics, a blue-riband sport which often struggles to attract eyeballs outside of Olympic years, American great Michael Johnson is launching a lucrative Grand Slam Track league in April with a US$12.6 million (S$17 million) prize fund split over four events - but not including any field events. "We're revolutionising the track landscape," said four-times Olympic champion Johnson.

Olympics chief

While there is no Olympics, the movement faces a pivotal year all the same as the International Olympic Committee elects a new president to replace Thomas Bach in March.

Whichever of the seven candidates wins will need to steer the Olympic juggernaut into an increasingly fractured world of geopolitics, climate change, gender issues and doping.

Saudi Arabia's insatiable appetite to keep shaping the sporting map is unlikely to diminish any time soon and many will see the kingdom's staging of the inaugural Olympic Esports Games next year as a precursor to a future bid for the real thing. Tennis kicks things off in 2025 with the Australian Open in January — a tournament that will unfortunately have to deal with the fallout of anti-doping cases involving men's champion and favourite Jannik Sinner of Italy and Poland's Iga Swiatek.

Women's football takes centre stage in July with the European Championship in Switzerland with England aiming to retain the title, while September offers the world athletics championships in Japan and the Ryder Cup golf in the United States.

Rugby fans have a Lions series in Australia starting in June to look forward to, while in cricket England host a five-test series against India before another eagerly-awaited Ashes series Down Under.

New Orleans stages NFL's Super Bowl in February and in Formula 1 another marathon season revs up in Melbourne in March.