标签：#sports

As culture warriors continue to stoke the flames of a gender panic in professional sports, wild conspiracy theories are coming into play.

ESPN is hiking the price of its subscription on September 17th, a change that will also impact its bundles with Disney Plus. In a support page spotted earlier by Sports Media Watch, ESPN says its ad-supported Select membership will cost $13.99 instead of $12.99 / month, while its Unlimited plan will rise to $31.99 from […]

The 9.58-second 100-meter dash record set by Usain Bolt in 2009 has been outpaced by Chinese robots participating at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. In a preliminary heat on Saturday, Tiangong Ultra, made by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation ​Center, ran the distance in 9.39 seconds, followed by the Honor-developed Lightning at 9.47 […]

Have we tried turning off society and turning it back on again?

Most fantasy sports leagues suffer the same problem: retention. Leagues play out over monthslong seasons, require regular attention, and can punish players severely for missing even a single week. I've started Fantasy Premier League (FPL) multiple times, but never finished a season. That's a problem for any fantasy league, but especially so for a new […]

2K is launching a new AAA game development studio, Small Axe Studios, with an ambitious goal: to build the company's "next blockbuster sports franchise," according to a LinkedIn post. The post doesn't explicitly say what sport this new game will focus on. But an image included in the post features what appears to be a […]

Jeff Bezos is reportedly close to buying his first stake in a sports team: the U.K.'s famed Liverpool Football Club.

Four weeks ago, San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan was involved in an accident near downtown Palo Alto. At the time Shanahan said only that the accident was his fault. But during a recent press conference he shared more details about the incident, including the fact that he had his Tesla's Autopilot engaged at the […]

Why Sports Data Is Harder Than Most People Think Building believable cross-era simulations turned out to be less about the engine and more about the data underneath it. Here is what we learned. MicroLeague Dev Blog, Vol. 3 By Eddie Solar When we started building MicroLeague Sports, I assumed the simulation engine would be the hard part. The vision was ambitious enough to justify that assumption. Let fans ask whether the 1996 Bulls beat the 2017 Warriors. Whether the 1985 Bears could slow down Patrick Mahomes. Which Cowboys team was actually the greatest. Teaching software to play those games across eras felt like the mountain. I was wrong about which mountain it was. The engine is hard, but it is a solvable, bounded kind of hard. The data underneath it is a different animal. Like most developers approaching this for the first time, we figured sports data was largely a collection exercise: gather historical teams, player stats, schedules, and box scores, feed it to the model, done. That assumption fell apart almost immediately, and the reason it fell apart is the subject of this article. Sports data is not a collection problem. It is an identity problem. Franchises do not stay the same thing. Players are not one entity. And the historical record does not agree with itself. The Real Problem Is Modeling Identity Over Time Volume 2 covered the era problem: statistics are confounded by the conditions that produced them, so a raw number pulled across decades lies to you. That is a normalization challenge, and it is real. But normalization assumes you already know what you are normalizing. Before you can compare the 1992 Cowboys to the 2023 Chiefs, your system has to have a confident answer to a more basic question: what exactly is a "team," and what exactly is a "player," when your dataset spans a hundred years? Those sound like trivial questions. They are not. They are the questions that ate most of our early engineering time, and getting them wrong quietly corrupts ever

Spotify has introduced a new Running Mode feature that makes it easier to curate playlists around your workout goals, music tastes, and desired beats per minute (BPM). The aim is to help you "spend less time hunting for the right music and more time moving," according to Spotify's announcement, providing customizable running presets and optional […]

Electrolyte powders promise better hydration, energy, and recovery. But unless you’re losing serious fluid, water and food probably have you covered.

Four-minute miles are almost routine. Middle schoolers are beating college runners. Inside the youth track boom that’s turning kids and teens into speed machines.

The end of the FIFA Men’s World Cup is nigh. Here’s how to watch the final games and the first ever World Cup halftime show.

Organizers want the show to be the most-viewed halftime show in history. Having Shakira, Justin Bieber, Coldplay, and BTS will surely help—but do soccer fans want it?

The AI Revolution: How Artificial Intelligence is Redefining the 2026 FIFA World Cup The FIFA World Cup has always been a spectacle of human skill, passion, and drama. However, the upcoming 2026 tournament is set to be something entirely different: the world’s first "AI-native" major sporting event. Through a strategic partnership between FIFA and Lenovo, artificial intelligence is being woven into the very fabric of the tournament. This isn't just about fancy graphics on a screen; it is a fundamental shift in how the game is officiated, how teams prepare, how the tournament is managed, and how billions of fans experience the magic of football. By focusing on "democratization" and "operational intelligence," AI aims to level the playing field for all 48 participating nations while managing the massive logistical challenge of hosting matches across three countries and 16 different venues. Precision on the Pitch: Revolutionizing Officiating One of the most high-pressure aspects of football is decision-making. In a tournament of this scale, a single millimeter can be the difference between a goal and a miss. AI is stepping in to ensure transparency and accuracy through two major innovations: 3D Player Avatars and Advanced SAOT To make Semi-Automated Offside Technology (SAOT) more accurate, every one of the 1,248 participating players underwent a rapid 3D body scan. In just one second, technology created highly accurate "digital twins" of each athlete. Unlike previous generic models, these lifelike avatars replicate individual body shapes and dimensions. This allows for millimeter-accurate tracking, providing officials and fans with realistic 3D animations during offside replays that are much easier to understand. The "Referee View" Fans often want to see what the officials see, but traditional body cameras can be too shaky to watch. Using Lenovo’s custom AI-powered synchronization and stabilization engine, the footage from headset-mounted cameras is processed in real-t

Argentina’s Lionel Messi was supposed to be done years ago. Now, sports science is helping soccer’s biggest stars rewrite the rules of aging.

The end of the FIFA Men’s World Cup is nigh. Here’s how to watch the final games and the first ever World Cup halftime show.

The end of the FIFA Men’s World Cup is nigh. Here’s how to watch the final games and the first ever World Cup halftime show.

FIFA’s network was vulnerable to anyone with even minimal access.

The video assistant referee system, or VAR, has led to some controversial calls at the 2026 World Cup. Here’s why.