A quarter of a century on: what we got right and wrong about sport’s future
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From VAR to the rise of women’s sport, the media’s finest were hit and miss in predicting how things would develop. Imagine tumbling back in time to 1 January, 2000. You pick up the 70p Saturday Guardian, with its spectacular photograph of Earth from space and a headline that hails the dawn of the new millennium. Soon you are reading a host of predictions for how the 21st century will play out – across science and sport, lifestyle and life itself – many of which oscillate between the fantastical and the terrifying.
![[Sean Ingle]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/10/09/Sean-Ingle,-L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
By 2010, a newborn will have a robot pet, you learn from Andy Beckett’s brilliant essay Born to be Wired. By 2030 they will be “in brain-to-brain contact, via electronic implants, without needing to speak with family members, lovers and friends”. If that is not wild enough, one expert reckons that by the end of the 21st century, “it is not clear whether we will be people or robots”.
![[The New Zealand Black Ferns perform the haka before the Rugby World Cup in 2021.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6a0578b757df9402a637bf65c0fe101de8466ef0/0_74_4252_2551/master/4252.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Yet that assumes humans even make it that far. Because over in the sports section, the heavyweight boxer Julius Francis is warning of Armageddon. “If we are facing the end of the world I want to be ready,” he adds, ominously. What were the smartest minds on Fleet Street thinking about the future of sport when they woke up in the year 2000? And, 25 years on, how accurate were they?.
![[A banner at Manchester United v Everton in December 2024 protests against high ticket prices]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b91097236083211b2f3d5fd2ffe7a54a21cd1c5f/0_330_5472_3283/master/5472.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
