Young athletes compete in preliminary phygital football games in Tatarstan

By Sibel Morrow and Zeynep Beyza Kilic

KAZAN, Tatarstan (AA) - The international preliminary final games of "phygital football," a sport that blends football with a virtual environment, were held in Tatarstan’s national capital of Kazan.

The event was held as part of "Russia-Islamic World: Kazan Forum 2023," to which Anadolu Agency (AA) is the global communications partner.

Eight teams from Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Serbia and Iran raced for a 3 million rubles ($35,000) prize in the phygital football competition, one of the "phygital games" which is a combination of “physical” and “digital” in English.

Teams participated first on the football simulator before playing on the actual pitch in the two-part encounter. Former Brazilian football superstar Ronaldinho's R10 team was second, while the Russian Phoenix team won the competition by a score of 12-7.

- Main games will kick off next February

The phygital games is a series of competitions aimed at showcasing new sporting formats. Each discipline combines elements of the physical and digital, integrating classical sports with e-sports as well as VR-/AR technology to create an entirely new sporting phenomena: phygital sports. The sports test the physical fitness of athletes and their mastery of contemporary digital skills, such as gaming.

Vladislav Ershov, director of Future Games Competitions, said the concept of integrating traditional sports with e-sports played in virtual environments first emerged in 2020.

“More and more young people are doing e-Sports. For us, it was obvious that we have to move in this track and that's why we did this new format combining e-Sports and classical sports. Because all the young people are somehow playing it and thus they do less and less physical activity,” said Ershov.

Reiterating that the main purpose of phygital games is to make young people do physical activities, Ershov said they held a bidding and promotional campaign in Russia in 2020.

“The previous year more than 40 or 50 regions in Russia were bidding for the right to host the first games of the future and Kazan won the bidding,” he said.

Ershov said the first main games of the future will be hosted in Russia from Feb. 23 and March 2 in 2024.

“This is like a type of preparational event now, we are testing events, we're testing format, picture how the audience like the product, testing teams and infrastructure, our operational stuff here in our local organizing committee, how people do the events to improve,” said Ershow.

He added that there will be 16 teams in each discipline and 256 teams in total, which means more than 2,000 athletes will compete.