Snap, Meta, Microsoft and Apple are increasing their investment in tech that attempts to integrate seamlessly into our lives and onto our bodies.
Thus far, millions of us have bought and used these devices, but they have not displaced the smartphone yet.
This will be the year when wearable tech finally starts to truly compete with the phone for our attention. Soon, with the glance of an eye, users could find themselves connected to music, their fitness stats, or the internet.
Screentime may reduce on your smartphone, but your digital connection could now become permanent. Wearables are for real, and sports needs to prepare for a world of potentially infinite user data and distraction.
Wearable tech in and of itself is not a trend.
For starters, estimates suggest Apple has sold over 250 million Apple Watches worldwide since creation and there are 125 million members with access to the fitness wristband brand WHOOP; this is no fad.
The question is not about which one piece of tech you will own, but how many of them.
We can now walk around with four to five ‘smart’ devices on us – a watch, phone, fitness tracker, earbuds, and even glasses.
“It needs to be good in order for you to want to keep it on your face.”
Mark Zuckerberg, Co-founder & CEO, Meta
Between them, they have the ability to track several data points, create content and augment reality. This creates opportunities for sports, or at least changes the parameters.
With every opportunity comes a potential threat. With so much tech on one user, there is always something available to distract a user away from your event.
Imagine a user with their five elements of wearable tech on. Notifications on their phone, alerts on their wrist, conversations in their ear. How are you going to keep them focused on what you’re providing?
Welcome to a new version of the attention economy.
This is just the beginning.
Tech giants such as Meta and Snap are focused on smart glasses heading into 2025. Meta’s Orion AR glasses and Snap’s fifth iteration of their Spectacles, alongside a new proprietary operating system for the glasses, hope to break the smartphone’s monopoly on our attention.
The journey to fully-fledged smart glasses will be gradual, rather than sudden. However, we could be beginning the evolution away from the smartphone, with everything available at the glance of an eye.
Sports must have a plan for wearables. Both to prepare for the benefits (influx of data about customers) and its dangers (users distracted away from the product you’re providing).
“I think glasses allow us to use computing grounded in the real world, together with our friends, and in a much more natural way.”
Evan Spiegel, Co-founder & CEO, Snap Inc
An opportunity to connect
As users become more aware of the depth of data provided by wearable tech, more people than ever will have access to rich data on their athletic performance, and they will be interested in benchmarking themselves against professionals or members of their community.
This creates opportunities for sports leagues, teams and other rights holders.
The increased personal data now available via new wearables may deepen fans’ interest in learning more about personal optimization from a reliable source. Especially if that advice is tangible, easy to implement, and then benchmarkable against others.
Take the easy win
For a modest cost in the broader picture of production equipment, smart glasses are a no-brainer pick-up for content teams with room in their budget.
The Ray-Ban range allows for authentic first-person perspectives and inserts fans into places they may not otherwise be able to experience. Pre-existing and well-established formats like “Day in the Life” could be significantly upgraded through the accessible – and elevating – technology.
Beyond that, publishers can test and learn new formats with no significant production effort required. Imagine a golfer explaining first-hand how they tackle a tricky bunker shot with club in hand, unencumbered by video equipment. Perhaps a footballer providing guidance on free-kick techniques, showing how they strike the ball. There’s a whole world of content possible that’s yet to be fully tapped into.
Prepare for tomorrow, today
The Apple Vision Pro has not yet resulted in heavy unit sales or wider cultural resonance. However, its performance has done nothing to dampen developers’ appetite for developing immersive technologies.
All the major players in tech are devoting billions of dollars into the wearable space in 2025. Wearables are the present as well as the future.
Sports organizations and federations need to be ahead of the curve, and have preparations in place across content, CRM, in-stadia activations, and broadcast production. We are used to describing mobile devices as a second screen. As discussed in Trend 1, that is an increasingly outdated term and it will seem particularly archaic from 2025 when, as we believe, some devices could simply require a look to the side to get everything you need.
