Sports Tomorrow Congress to address personalisation in sport in the fields of performance and fan experience

The 2024 edition of the Sports Tomorrow Congress driven by the Barça Innovation Hub (BIHUB) is already revving its engines. “Shape your own game” is this year’s tagline and forms the basis for discussions around the increase and diversification of personalisation in the sports world. 

The Sports Tomorrow Congress will be held over two days from February 26 to 27, featuring a networking zone and a large conference hall at the Mobile World Congress, the technology fair that for the second year running is hosting these two days addressed at all professionals from a wide range of sporting disciplines. The congress can be attended in person (by invitation only) or online, for which access can still be purchased via the BIHUB website.

On the opening day, Monday 26, experts from all around the world will be presenting the latest developments in personalisation of nutrition, genomics, data and many other fields.

Nutrition and genomics

Asker Jeukendrup, head of nutrition for the Dutch Olympic team, will be giving a session on new strategies to optimise the nutrition of athletes in team sports. 

After that, Yannis Pitsiladis, genomics expert from the University of Brighton, will be talking about ways to include genetic disposition in performance analysis in order to improve the well-being of elite sportspeople. This will lead on to a session on sportomics, a field that analyses different biological parameters to shed light on personalisation in training and injury prevention.  Dr Gil Rodas and Dr Eva Ferrer, professionals from the BIHUB medical team, will be sharing a panel with Juan Ramón González, researcher from ISGlobal, to explain how FC Barcelona is working in this area.

The first day will also be providing a platform for the start-ups that BIHUB is investing in. Onalabs will be speaking about customised fitness and Visualfy will be detailing the importance of accessible facilities.

Data and technology in stadiums

Data interpretation, which has been a recurring theme at recent editions of the congress, will be debated this year by an international panel made up of Meghan Chayka, co-founder of Stathletes; Sarah Bailey, research director for the Tennessee Titans; and Vosse De Boonde, head of sports science and data analysis at Ajax. 

The agenda for the opening day is completed by the expert in technology applied to stadiums, Skarpi Hedinsson, technology manager for the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium, Los Angeles, as well as the heads of sports performance at Sevilla FC, Club Pachuca (Mexico) and Sporting FC (Costa Rica), and professors from the Universities of Vic and Liverpool.

Participation of club partners

The panel debates will be featuring a sizeable presence of companies associated to FC Barcelona, who will be showcasing their knowledge in such diverse fields as blockchain, presented by WhiteBIT, and nutrition, presented by BIMBO and Heura. 

The event also includes a new edition of the Allianz Startup Challenge in which a number of emerging enterprises will be presenting their solutions and products in different areas. The jury for this project will feature FC Barcelona’s vice-president for the Economic Area, Eduard Romeu, and MotoGP rider Marc Márquez.