From stadiums to cyberspace: How the metaverse will redefine sports fandom 

Edith Cowan University

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Beyond gaming and shopping, the metaverse is poised to reshape the fan experience, giving sports enthusiasts new and immersive ways to connect with their favourite athletes and teams. 

New research by Edith Cowan University (ECU) has examined how virtual and augmented realities are blurring the lines between physical and digital participation, offering new opportunities for inclusion, innovation, and engagement in the sporting world of the future. 

“The beauty of fandom is that when you go to an event, you have a collective identity. You are supporting and cheering a team. By bringing this fandom into the metaverse, you are able to do that from anywhere in the world,” Dr Anthony Kerr said.  

“The metaverse can give you access to any stadium, any player and any sport. You can be a part of the opening ceremony at the Olympics or experience the FIFA World Cup final up close.” 

Dr Ashlee Morgan said that given the deep loyalty and emotional connection that characterises sport fandom, this sector is uniquely positioned to capitalise on the metaverse’s potential to transform their experiences and sport consumption. 

However, while the metaverse promises exciting opportunities to bring society closer together and also monetise this connection, Dr Morgan said that this new platform was not without considerable legal and ethical risks.  

“As with many emerging technologies, and increasingly evident with social media use, concerns over privacy, security, and user safety have become central to debates about the metaverse’s future. Despite this, regulatory frameworks continue to lag technological innovation, particularly in areas such as data privacy and cybersecurity.” 

Dr Morgan noted that government oversight would be required to regulate the virtual environment, while sports teams and metaverse companies would need to take ownership and responsibility for user experience.  

Goggles On, Game On 

The metaverse fandom might be closer than we think, Dr Morgan said, pointing out that all the individual pieces of technology already exist to create this experience.  

“The technology to augment reality already exists, but the metaverse will simply give a platform for these technologies to converge. It will be a full sensory experience, where the user will be able to catch a rogue ball, or interact with fans next to you,” she said.  

Dr Kerr added that as these technologies become more affordable, they would become more widely used, opening the platform to more users. 

“We are already seeing elements of this augmented or virtual reality in our spaces. You have exercise bikes that allow you to race against other people around the world, along the path of the Tour de France. 

“As the technology becomes cheaper, and more wearable, more people will be adopting this technology.” 

 

 

 

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Media contact: Esmarie Iannucci, Media Advisor, 0405 774 465   

e.iannucci@ecu.edu.au 

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Journal

Sport in Society

DOI

10.1080/17430437.2025.2573289 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

The metaverse and sport fandom: revolutionising sport consumption

 

Hospital accreditation improves patient safety culture in Brazil

Study shows that accredited hospitals are more open to communication and incident reporting, but challenges remain in fostering a non-punitive response to errors

D'Or Institute for Research and Education

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Published in the Global Journal on Quality and Safety in Healthcare, a study led by D’Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR) researchers, Dr. Helidea Lima and Dr. Leopoldo Muniz, examined how hospital accreditation influences patient safety culture in Brazilian hospitals. The publication was highlighted in the journal’s editorial, reinforcing the importance of this research conducted in Brazil.

What does hospital accreditation mean?
Hospital accreditation works as a seal of quality. Independent organizations evaluate whether hospitals follow strict safety and quality standards. This process is crucial to ensuring best practices in care and building patient trust. In Brazil, however, fewer than 5% of hospitals hold such certification, which can be granted by institutions such as the Joint Commission International (JCI), ACSA (Agencia de Calidad Sanitaria de Andalucía), Qmentum International (Accreditation Canada), and the Organização Nacional de Acreditação (ONA).

Patient safety culture: beyond protocols
Patient safety culture reflects the values, attitudes, and behaviors of healthcare professionals in their approach to safe care. It includes openness to discussing errors, team communication, and learning from mistakes. In strong safety cultures, professionals feel safe reporting incidents without fear of punishment, which drives continuous improvement.

How the study was conducted
The study collected data in September 2022 across 68 hospitals from Rede D’Or. About 32,000 professionals participated by answering the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC), adapted to Portuguese. The survey compared perceptions between accredited and non-accredited hospitals—at the time, 80% of them were accredited.

The response rate was remarkably high: 91.4% of professionals contributed. This engagement demonstrates the relevance of the topic within Rede D’Or, which now has 90% of its hospitals accredited, more than half with international certification.

Main results
The overall patient safety culture score averaged 65.1%. Strengths included management support (77.5%) and organizational learning (81.8%). However, the non-punitive response to errors was weak, with only 43.2% of positive perceptions.

When comparing accredited and non-accredited hospitals, differences were relatively small: accredited institutions scored 3–4% higher in “openness to communication,” “frequency of events reported,” and “overall perception of patient safety.”

The role of nurses
An important finding was that nursing professionals contributed the most to safety event reporting, showing strong engagement in strengthening patient safety culture. Physicians, however, were more resistant to reporting incidents, underscoring the central role of nurses in building safer and more collaborative hospital environments.

Still, a high percentage of professionals (41.9%) reported no safety events in the previous 12 months, especially in non-accredited hospitals.

Impact of accreditation and persistent challenges
The results indicate that hospital accreditation has a positive impact on safety culture, particularly in fostering open communication and reporting incidents. However, the relatively small differences suggest that accreditation alone is not enough to transform organizational culture.

The greatest weakness identified was the punitive response to errors. Fear of punishment, rigid hierarchies, and lack of feedback still limit organizational learning. Another challenge is underreporting: nearly half of professionals did not report incidents, preventing more consistent progress in error prevention.

According to Rede D’Or, accreditation is an external driver to assess the technical quality of its hospital services. Rigorous monitoring of indicators and transparent disclosure of results are also key strategies. The study confirms this view, emphasizing that investments in training, engaged leadership, and non-punitive reporting systems are as essential as accreditation in achieving long-lasting improvements.

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Journal

Global Journal on Quality and Safety in Healthcare

DOI

10.36401/JQSH-24-42 

 

New study shows why clothing take-back programs fail — and what truly moves consumers to act

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences

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BALTIMORE, Nov. 18, 2025 – Retailers don’t need big financial incentives to get consumers to return used clothing—but they do need the right message. A new peer-reviewed study in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management finds that simply telling consumers their returned items will be “kept out of landfills” significantly increases participation in take-back programs. But when retailers disclose that they may resell those items for profit, participation plummets.

The study, “The Role of Information, Rewards, and Convenience in Take-Back Programs for Clothing,” was authored by Erin C. McKie of The Ohio State University, Anna Sáez de Tejada Cuenca of IESE Business School in Barcelona and Vishal Agrawal of Georgetown University. 

Take-back programs offer consumers a way to return used items such as clothing instead of throwing them away. Many companies and retailers offer these programs as part of their business model or to support their environmental stewardship and sustainability commitments. Regardless of the motivation, a persistent challenge remains: low consumer participation. This lack of participation is a major concern as it limits the programs’ effectiveness and long-term viability.

“One of the traditional mechanisms through which retailers incentivize consumers to participate in take-back programs is through monetary rewards,” McKie said. “However, our discussions with organizations in the retail industry and surveys of more than 100 clothing take-back programs revealed that providing rewards alone to induce consumer participation can be cost prohibitive. Motivated by this problem, we set out to study whether two other levers — information and convenience of the return process — can also influence consumer participation.”

To test these research questions, the researchers conducted four experiments involving more than 5,200 participants. The experiments measured the financial reward consumers required under different levels of information and convenience.

“We found that providing generic environmental information, that is, simply noting that collected items will be diverted from the landfill, significantly lowered the reward required for participation,” Sáez de Tejada said. “By contrast, mentioning that the retailer may resell the returned product and make a profit actually reduced participation. Our results show there is a consumer aversion toward companies visibly profiting from sustainability programs. Consumers demanded higher compensation when they learned that retailers would resell collected items.”

The study also found that greater convenience such as offering at-home pickup or easy mail-in options further reduced the amount of the reward required from consumers.

“Even though convenient options may cost retailers more, those costs may be offset by the lower rewards consumers expect,” Agrawal said. “Our research has shown that if retailers want to reuse collected clothing, they should facilitate it through a donation information framing, which eliminates consumers' aversion to the profit motive and thus motivates more sustainable consumer behavior.”

The experiments included both online and field studies. In one field test at a large U.S. university, more than 2,000 students were invited to return used jeans and T-shirts under different informational framings. The results mirrored laboratory findings: generic landfill-avoidance messages produced more returns than recycling or resale messages while donation appeals performed best overall.

The authors concluded that combining generic messaging with convenient return options can substantially improve the effectiveness of take-back programs designed to reduce textile waste.

Read the full study here.

About INFORMS and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management

INFORMS is the world’s largest association for professionals and students in operations research, AI, analytics, data science and related disciplines, serving as a global authority in advancing cutting-edge practices and fostering an interdisciplinary community of innovation. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, a leading journal published by INFORMS, features rigorous research on operations management and sustainable business practices. INFORMS empowers its community to improve organizational performance and drive data-driven decision-making through its journals, conferences and educational resources. Learn more at www.informs.org or @informs.

Contact

Rebecca Seel

Public Affairs Specialist, INFORMS

rseel@informs.org

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Journal

Manufacturing & Service Operations Management

DOI

10.1287/msom.2023.0561 

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

The Role of Information, Rewards, and Convenience in Take-Back Programs for Clothing

 

A new era of brain-computer interfaces: Restored touch, accurate speech, seamless movement

Researchers demonstrated more intuitive and personalized BCI for long-term use in humans

Society for Neuroscience

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SAN DIEGO — Scientists have developed better devices to help people with disabilities regain function. These findings will be presented at Neuroscience 2025, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world’s largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are systems that decode brain activity and communicate it to an external device, such as a prosthetic on the body or cursor on a computer. As an emerging technology, it can help patients with paralysis or other disabilities move, communicate, and regain a measure of autonomy. The devices can range from sensors placed on the skin to surgical implants deeper in the body. But the technology hasn't always been viable for long-term use or customizable for the user.

Today’s new findings show that:

• A paralyzed man with amytotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) used a speech BCI independently at home for more than two years to control his home computer, work full-time, and communicate more than 237,000 sentences with up to 99% word output accuracy in controlled tests. (David Brandman, University of California, Davis)
• Intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) via microelectrode interfaces in the somatosensory cortex — designed to give patients touch sensation — remained safe and effective in human subjects over years, suggesting the technique could help patients control prosthetics with more dexterity. (Robert Gaunt, University of Pittsburgh)
• Scientists have developed a technique called magnetomicrometry, wherein small magnets are implanted in muscle tissue and tracked by magnetic field sensors to measure the real-time mechanics of a muscle. Results suggest more intuitive prosthetic control than traditional neural approaches. (Christopher Shallal, MIT)

“BCIs are moving beyond proof-of-concept to become reliable medical technologies for daily life,” said Grégoire Courtine, PhD, professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and moderator of the press conference. “The studies presented this year show that BCIs can be safe and effective over many years, while also becoming more intuitive and personalized. This progress brings us closer to a future where neurotechnologies restore communication, movement, and even touch with clinical reliability.”

For complete access to Neuroscience 2025 in-person and online, request media credentials. This research was supported by national funding agencies including the National Institutes of Health and private funding organizations.

Sunday, November 16, 2025

1:30–2:30 p.m. PST

San Diego Convention Center, Room 15A, and online for registered media

 

BCI Press Conference Summary   

• These studies focused on improved brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) in human subjects.
• Whether improving the longevity of a device to make it a feasible long-term solution for patients, providing better human safety data on an existing intervention, or developing more responsive implants for BCI efficacy, new research advances neuroprosthetic technologies for enhanced patient outcomes.

 

Stable high-accuracy speech and cursor decoding with a chronic intracortical brain-computer interface over two years

David Brandman, dmbrandman@health.ucdavis.edu, Abstract NANO022.02

• Maintaining BCI performance over long periods is critical for clinical viability, but chronic use presents challenges. Brain electrodes can degrade over time and systems often need to be calibrated frequently.
• A paralyzed man with ALS enrolled in the BrainGate2 clinical trial and had four microelectrode arrays placed in his left ventral precentral gyrus, recording from 256 electrodes.
• The patient used a BCI independently at home for more than two years without needing to recalibrate it each day. The multimodal BCI decoded both his attempted speech into text and his attempted hand movements into computer cursor movements and clicks. In structured tests, the BCI was consistently 99 percent accurate at outputting his intended words. The user controlled his personal computer, worked full-time, and communicated with loved ones. Over 4,800 hours of use, he communicated more than 237,000 sentences at around 56 words per minute.
• The results suggest that implanted BCIs can potentially deliver dependable communication and digital access over long-term periods.

 

Ten-year safety profile of intracortical microstimulation in the human somatosensory cortex

Robert Gaunt, rag53@pitt.edu, Abstract NANO022.10

• Intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) of the somatosensory cortex can create artificial touch sensations in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI). The restored sense of touch can improve control of BCI-controlled prosthetics. But long-term human safety data are limited.
• Five participants were implanted with microelectrode arrays in the somatosensory cortex, receiving millions of electrical stimulation pulses over a combined 24 years.
• ICMS evoked high-quality, stable tactile sensation in the hand without serious adverse effects. More than half of the electrodes continued to function reliably — even after 10 years, in the case of one participant. This study is the most extensive evaluation of ICMS in humans and establishes that ICMS is safe over long periods. 

 

Implanted magnets enable wireless muscle state sensing for neuroprosthetic control applications

Christopher Shallal, cshallal@mit.edu, Abstract PSTR457.13

• Conventional neuroprosthetics rely on electrical signals from the body, including muscles and nerves. But measuring muscle signals on the surface is often noisy and inaccurate, while surgically-implanted sensors are invasive and sometimes impractical.
• Scientists developed magnetomicrometry, in which small magnets were implanted in muscle tissue and tracked by external magnetic field sensors. The magnets allow muscle movements to be measured in real time. The researchers tested three patients for up to one year and compared prosthesis control between surface and implanted electrode techniques. Magnetomicrometry outperformed them both in terms of accuracy.
• This new method demonstrates potential for future neural interfaces to measure muscle dynamics directly, and offer a more responsive, less invasive, and intuitive connection for the user.

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The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) is an organization of nearly 30,000 basic scientists and clinicians who study the brain and the nervous system.