This will be the Sports Tomorrow Congress 2023

Next Monday 27 and Tuesday 28 February, the Sports Tomorrow Congress promoted by the Barça Innovation Hub (BIHUB) and GSMA will be held at the Fira de Gran Via in Barcelona, which this year is forming part of the Mobile World Congress.

The 2023 tag-line is The Minds Behind The Game and this edition will mainly be taking an in-depth look at and debating the role of the brain in sports performance and at cognitive applications in the field of artificial intelligence in all spheres of the sports industry.

Edu Castro, Bojan Krkic and NASA

The congress will begin on Monday morning with a session on managing success and failure by rally driver Albert Llovera. Then the coach and psychologist of the FC Barcelona roller hockey team, Edu Castro and Laura Sánchez, will be giving a session on psychology and high performance before handing over to former Barça player Bojan Krkic, who will be chairing a panel on emotional management in elite football.

Later in the morning, NASA engineers Howard Hu and Carlos García Galán will also be appearing to discuss the American aeronautical agency’s involvement in human performance and artificial intelligence. To end the morning, FC Barcelona nutritionists Toña Lizarraga and Mireia Porta, in association with Heura, will be leading a session on the connections between food and the brain.

Cory Higgins and neuroscience 

In the afternoon, there will be a series of sessions linked to medicine, including one with University of Barcelona neuropsychologist David Bartrés, also featuring Xavier Corbella, head of FC Barcelona’s Medical Services. On the same topic, a session on brain damage and neurodegenerative diseases linked to football will feature Edwin Goedhart, head of the medical services for the Netherlands Football Federation; Hospital Clínic neurologist Àlex Iranzo; first team doctor Xavier Valle; and the director of the BIHUB health department, Gil Rodas.

The first day of the congress will close with another major intervention on sport in which Barça basketball player Cory Higgins will be talking about mental preparation in elite basketball. The day will end with the second Allianz Startup Challenge, which rewards innovative and disruptive proposals that are designed to have a positive impact on the world of sport.

Tuesday, institutional closure by Laporta

On Tuesday, artificial intelligence again be up for discussion, in this case linked to virtual reality, with a series of panels between international speakers. The former CEO of Liverpool, Peter More, will be talking about the metaverse linked to the world of football; television producer Amani Martin will take a session on sports and storytelling in the digital age; and American influencer Joe Pompliano will also be talking about storytelling, but in his case around the new formats offered by this discipline of communication in the world of sports.

At 12.30pm on Tuesday, the congress will be officially closed with a speech by president Joan Laporta.

The Sports Tomorrow Congress is an event aimed at all professionals from the full range of sports disciplines. Attendance in person of the 2023 edition will be by invitation only, but there is also an online format that can be purchased on the congress website.