Foreword
In 2009, I worked as a sports industry journalist in London. The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games were on the horizon, and the British capital felt like it was at the center of the sporting world. As a result, with so many eyes on the city and so many high-level sports conferences calling it home, it became a regular stopping point for delegations from the countries bidding to host the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups. Equipped with well-designed decks, scale-model stadiums, slick presentations, and multimillion-dollar budgets, 11 bidding teams from 13 countries sought to convince the media and the world that they would represent the best hosts for the global game's most-watched tournament.
There were more talking points than could fit in this book, let alone the foreword. Among them all, though, I remember being repeatedly amazed by the Japanese bid. Never among the frontrunners, and perhaps because it had co-hosted the tournament as recently as 2002, it was the bid that felt most focused on the future: Japan pledged the development of technology that would allow hundreds of stadiums around the world to show the games in real-time 3D coverage and via holographic projection; second screens would allow the instant sharing of groundbreaking data; augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) were key to every element of the fan experience; microphones would be embedded in innovative locations to capture sounds never heard before by viewers at home; and translation earpieces ...