Games of the Future vividly presented the phygital concept to the world, and this movement has already begun to develop around the world, the head of the Games of the Future project Igor Stolyarov announced at the press conference in Moscow.
“312 teams from 116 countries took part in Games of the Future. This is more than 2,000 participants. We have held three mini-world championships as part of the large multisport tournament. The geography of the participants in the competitions in Cybathletics, Battle of robots and Sports programming can prove this. 100% of the tickets were sold – full house for the semi-finals and finals of the disciplines. The format reached the target audience – young people – and received a positive response all over the world. A number of countries have expressed a desire to replicate this response within their geography. According to our internal audit, Games of the Future have accumulated a total of 3.2 billion views across digital platforms. Russia has made the tournament without borders and barriers,” said Igor Stolyarov, head of the Games of the Future project.
Kazan has become the capital of the first Games of the Future, which has repeatedly hosted world-class sporting events. The main venue of the tournament was the Kazan Expo exhibition complex, in addition to this, 10 more venues in the capital of Tatarstan, Innopolis and Sirius housed the competitions. Games of the Future have become an excellent example of using the existing infrastructure, while each discipline has its own impressive “setup”: stages, scenery, lighting and sound equipment.
“The final figures, emotions, and reviews indicate that we managed to achieve a positive result. We have once again proved that Russia is an open country with accumulated sports competencies. We are able to hold competitions of any level. This summer, the BRICS Games will be held in Kazan, the program of which includes two phygital disciplines: football and basketball,” noted Vladimir Leonov, Minister of Sport of the Republic of Tatarstan.
Among the participants of Games of the Future were prize-winners of the world and European championships, winners of prestigious competitions in a variety of sports. A very representative team was assembled by the discipline of Vkusno – I Tochka Phygital Skateboarding. The South American Latino Gang team became its champion, for which one of the best skaters in the world, Argentine Mathias Del’Olio and Peruvian Angelo Caro Narvaez, performed. Russian Slugs with Maksim Ezhov, a participant in the World and European Championships, took the third place.
“It was a fantastic tournament, with opponents of the highest level. I really liked the skate park created for us. It’s cool that such a project was invented and implemented in Russia. It’s original, interesting and exciting. We communicate well with the guys from other teams, other countries – and everyone was delighted with Games of the Future. I hope that phygital skateboarding will continue to develop, and I will be happy to take part in such a tournament again,” Maksim Ezhov told.
Goalkeeper Denis Parkhomenko became the beach soccer world champion in 2021 and continues to be a member of the Russian national team. But even he had a hard time on the field of Games of the Future. He admitted that the goalkeeper has a lot more work to do in this format. He also noted that it is very interesting to combine physical activity with playing a football simulator. It was the lack of experience in the digital part of the phygital match that let down Phoenix, Denis’s team, which ended up in the fourth place.
“The format of phygital football is very close to me. It’s a small playground, everything happens very dynamically. This format is very suitable for the psychological needs of the spectators. Everyone is used to getting the maximum amount of information in a short period of time. With all due respect to traditional football, not all matches are fun. In this case, phygital football is an ideal alternative so that a person can experience various emotions for an hour, like on a roller coaster. Games of the Future socialize young people. Literally right after after the tournament, the capital’s sports complex contacted me and offered to create a sports ground on its premises, where to combine the eSports part and the football part,” Denis Parkhomenko shared his emotions.
“Games of the Future is comparable to the Winter Olympics in Sochi in terms of importance for world sports. As the official bookmaker of this historic tournament, we exclusively accepted bets on 305 events, and in just 2 weeks of Games, about 18,500 customers placed almost 68,000 bets. This is an excellent result, considering the first experience of accepting bets on multisport competitions. It is a great pride for Liga Stavok to be a part of this unusual, large-scale and promising project and share its success. This is a high achievement of Russia and Russian sports,” said Yuri Krasovsky, President of Liga Stavok.
Information
Games of the Future is an international multisport tournament in the phygital concept, a sports show of a new format that combines competitions in physical and digital dimensions. The technology partner is VK Play. The first Games of the Future were attended by 312 teams and more than 2,000 athletes from 116 countries in 21 innovative disciplines. The competitions are divided into five categories, or challenges: sports, tactical, battle, technical, speedrun.
The title sponsor of the Games of the Future tournament is the global energy company Gazprom, the world leader in the field of natural gas. Half a million employees of the company work all over the country to ensure that clean energy from the bowels of the earth is available to as many people as possible. Gazprom also fills Russia with the energy of sports: it creates modern sports facilities, supports amateur, professional sports and competitions of the highest level.
PAO Sberbank, the general partner of Games of the Future, is one of the largest banks in Russia and one of the leading global financial institutions. Sberbank accounts for about a third of the assets of the entire Russian banking sector. Sberbank is a key lender for the national economy and holds one of the largest shares in the deposit market. The main shareholder of PAO Sberbank is the Russian Federation represented by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, which owns 50% of the authorized capital of PAO Sberbank plus 1 voting share. The remaining 50% minus 1 voting share of the bank’s authorized capital is owned by Russian and international investors. The general license of the Bank of Russia for banking operations No. 1481 dated 11.08.2015. Official websites of the bank: www.sberbank.com (Sberbank Group’s website), www.sberbank.ru
The official bookmaker of Games of the Future is Liga Stavok, a Russian betting company founded in 2008. The company’s activities are aimed at supporting national sports and creating a new field of sports entertainment. The company develops a long-term partnership with the leading sports organizations of the country: it is an official partner of the Russian Hockey Federation, a general partner of the Russian Boxing Federation, as well as an official partner of the Constellation of Goodness Charitable Foundation.
The official transport partner of the project was the SOLLERS group, which provides UAZ and Sollers cars for the roadshow announcing the event, as well as for the movement of tournament participants during Games of the Future.
G-Drive and G-Energy brands are strategic partners of Games of the Future, with whose support one of the key disciplines of the tournament, G-Drive Phygital Racing, took place. The cars of all its participants were filled with high-tech G-Drive fuel from the Gazpromneft gas station network, which is used in the largest motorsport competitions in the country. Experts from the G-Energy mobile laboratory provided technical support for the discipline. In the test runs of the phygital racing, the brand tested the new G-Energy Racing 5W-40 engine oil, which will soon be available to ordinary motorists.
Title Sponsor is PAO Gazprom
General Sponsors:
PAO Gazprom Neft G-Drive
PAO Sibur Holding Sibur
OAO Russian Railways
OOO VK Company VK Play
PAO Sberbank SBER
OOO PMBK (Liga Stavok)
OOO INTERROS Holding Company Interros
PAO Megafon Yota
Official sponsors:
OOO PBO System – Vkusno – I Tochka
PAO Sollers / UAZ
PAO Aeroflot
OOO Wildberries
OOO NTS Gradient – Influence
Roscosmos State Corporation
AO Positive Technologies
AO Russian Post
OOO Nanobarrier – HyDrop
AO Kaspersky Laboratory – Kaspersky
More information about the tournament can be found on the official channels of Games of the Future: