We are coming to an end of the greatest financial age of sports in history.  The twelve years between 1996 and 2008 were years when the money around sports exploded beyond any precedent era.  This also means that, going forward, the economics around sports in general will decline, at least for the next 5-8 years if not longer.

The bookends for these 12 years of explosive financial growth are the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and the Beijing Olympics of 2008.  The Atlanta Olympics were the first post-cold war Olympics and, being held in the U.S. created a huge marketing platform.  The …

Last week the Internationale Funkausstellung was held in Berlin.  This is the largest consumer electronics convention in Europe, equaling and perhaps surpassing the CES show that occurs every January in Las Vegas.  One of the central themes behind major new product launches was the Internet and the central role it is now beginning to play in the wirelessly networked home.

This has been something that has interested me for years and a subject about which I have written here and here in this blog.  As recently as five years ago, the topic of convergence was a speculative, hot …

It was just reported that, as expected, there are now more Internet users in China than in the U.S. As of last month there were 253 million Internet users in China as compared to 220 million in the U.S. What is striking is that in just the last year, the number of new users in China was 90 million, or a growth rate of more than 50%. That annual increase in users is more that the total number of users in most countries in the world.

There are several interesting aspects to these numbers. Of course, since …

The tag line of this blog is “A Future Look at Today”. It is not a political blog, nor is this a political column. I have assiduously kept politics out of this space leaving partisan conversations about campaign issues to others. There is a lot of heat around partisan politics and such heat can prevent clarity. As a futurist I think about the future by looking at the trends, patterns and dynamic forces that exist or are beginning to form. Readers of this column come here to get a sense of what might happen and why. That is …