The hidden workforce powering the beautiful game

Insight: World Cup fever isn’t only just playing out on the pitch this year — it’s now accelerating the sport’s industrialized data economy. This year’s matches feature sensor-fitted balls, real-time tracking, AI-assisted offside calls, but also dedicated AI assistants for each of the 48 teams making their way through the group stages. But behind the automation sits a global workforce of human annotators in emerging markets, including Cambodia and the Philippines, manually logging player movements and match events. The result? A structured data set for teams, broadcasters, video game companies, and even the global sports betting industry to leverage.

Impact: Football has embraced the use of data to deliver competitive advantages, informing recruitment and scouting industries to injury prevention and in-game tactics. But the story is less about football becoming data-driven and more about how the AI economy is globalizing through uneven value chains. This year’s World Cup is expected to generate about $9 billion, making it the most lucrative sporting tournament ever. Yet the high-value analytics, software, and commercial rights remain concentrated in wealthier markets, while the labor-intensive work of cleaning, tagging, and validating data is pushed to lower-cost markets elsewhere, raising familiar questions around pay, visibility, and who really captures the upside of AI adoption.

Beijing-based Zhipu’s newest LLM GLM 5.2 runs at less than one-tenth of the price of Anthropic’s Fable 5. With American companies grappling with soaring token costs, such a value proposition is likely attractive. Chinese models are also closing the capability gap: GLM 5.2 was ranked fourth overall by Artificial Analysis. Yet the price disparity is also but one fundamental difference with Chinese AI: often lower-cost, open source, and built with limited access to advanced chips.

Insight: Nintendo has become an unlikely casualty of the AI boom. The company behind Super Mario has watched its share price fall by nearly a third this year because the chips inside its Switch 2 consoles come from the same suppliers feeding the world’s largest AI data centers. Nvidia, SK Hynix, and Arm are all prioritizing data center contracts over consumer electronics, resulting in Nintendo now expecting to absorb an extra ¥100 billion in costs this year. With the memory crunch expected to last until 2030, a company built on the joy of play is being repriced by the economics of enterprise infrastructure.

Impact: Nintendo's predicament is a window into a broader reshaping of the gaming industry. The traditional business model — sell hardware at scale, build a player base, and monetize through software — is no longer sustainable. Sony is rethinking its business model for the next PlayStation, while Microsoft has already raised Xbox prices twice this year. If hardware shifts from a mass-market product to an aspirational one, the consequences ripple outward to third-party developers like Take-Two and Ubisoft, whose economics depend on large installed bases. The future of the gaming industry may rest on pivoting toward lower-tech gameplay, IP licensing, and entertainment crossovers to stay afloat. 

Insight: Singapore’s S$1 billion Therme project is the city-state’s latest bet that wellness is becoming an economic sector rather than just a lifestyle trend. Rather than relying on beaches or natural hot springs, Singapore is trying to manufacture a wellness destination through urban planning, technology, and premium experiences, reflecting how governments are increasingly treating wellbeing as an engine for tourism and economic growth.

Impact: The new wellness boom is another example of how competition between Asian destinations is evolving. Countries like Thailand, Indonesia, and India have long dominated wellness tourism through their natural landscapes and traditional healing practices. Singapore is taking the opposite approach, using infrastructure, design, and curation to compete in the same market. If it works, it could reshape what a “wellness destination” looks like and encourage other cities to package “quality of life” as an export industry. 

Asia’s news ecosystem is increasingly becoming platform-led — but the shift is happening against an ever-weakening trust backdrop. Globally, trust in traditional news has fallen to 37%, while markets such as Philippines, Malaysia, and Taiwan are well below the average. It comes as no surprise then that audiences are moving further and further away from direct publisher relationships toward intermediated news environments with social and video platforms dominating across Southeast Asia while AI chatbots are fast emerging as a preferred access point across the continent, led by South Korean consumers. For communicators, it’s clear that the challenge isn’t only about getting into the news cycle but ensuring that messages carry through as they move through more fragmented, platform-mediated channels.

Read the full report here.