At TSG Day 2025, the International Council of Traditional Sports and Games convened a special session bringing together extended reality (XR) developers, augmented reality (AR) artists, metaverse architects, and traditional sports practitioners to explore a defining question for the future of cultural heritage: can immersive technology save traditional sports?

The Session: "From Tribal Grounds to the Metaverse"

The session featured presentations from XR creators who have already built immersive experiences around traditional sports and indigenous games, alongside ICTSG researchers and community knowledge-holders. Together, they mapped the possibilities and limits of digital technologies in the service of living cultural heritage.

Opening remarks from ICTSG President Khalil Ahmed Khan set the frame: "We must be careful not to mistake the map for the territory. A traditional sport in a video game is a memory of a sport. A traditional sport played by children in their village is alive. Technology can help us remember — but only communities can help us live."

What XR Can Do for TSG

Immersive technologies offer remarkable possibilities for traditional sports documentation and outreach. Three-dimensional motion capture can record the precise techniques of master wrestlers, capoeiristas, or glima practitioners in forms that can be studied, archived, and replicated across centuries. Virtual reality environments can transport students in Manila or Manchester into the experience of a Mongolian naadam archery contest or a West African wrestling festival, creating empathy and curiosity that static media cannot.

Augmented reality overlays can be deployed at physical traditional sports events, providing contextual information to audiences unfamiliar with the cultural significance of what they are watching — transforming spectators into students of cultural heritage.

The Metaverse as Archive

Several XR developers presented prototypes of metaverse spaces dedicated to traditional sports: virtual stadiums where ulama, sepak takraw, and buzkashi competitions can be experienced from impossible camera angles; digital museums where the full diversity of ICTSG's documented sports can be explored; interactive training environments where the techniques of rare traditional martial arts are taught by AI-animated masters.

The Limits and the Imperative

The session was clear about the limits of XR in traditional sports preservation. Technology can preserve form, but not function. It can record technique, but not transmit the social bonds, seasonal rhythms, and community meanings that make traditional sports irreplaceable. For ICTSG, XR is a supplement to community revitalisation, not a substitute for it.

The conclusion: the most powerful technology for preserving traditional sports remains a grandparent teaching a grandchild to play. Everything else is in service of that moment.