Phygital International CEO Nis Hatt believes that the Philippines can thrive in the budding phygital sports movement.
Phygital sports took center stage at the Games of the Future 2025 in Abu Dhabi, showcasing a new era of competition that blends the physical and the digital.
Events such as phygital basketball, football, fighting, drone racing, MOBA, and PC games highlighted the growing movement, which mixes traditional sports with esports elements.
CEO of Phygital International and one of the founders of the phygital sports movement, Nis Hatt, believes the concept has strong potential to gain traction in the Philippines.
“By having some athletes here already from the Philippines, especially in MOBA: MLBB, we know for a fact that esports is really big in the Philippines, and it’s something people really take seriously, especially young people,” he said.
This year, Aurora Gaming represented the Philippines in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, finishing third in the MOBA tournament and taking home P6.3 million in prize money.
Hatt hopes the Filipino presence at the Games of the Future can spark wider conversations about phygital sports—a unique fusion of physical competition and digital gameplay.
"By having these gamers present here, I hope Filipinos would start talking about the phygital concept where you have this mix of two worlds, where you have this fusion of the more traditional and classical sport and with the technological side of this.”
The challenge, however, lies in implementation.
Philippine esports dominance has largely come from Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, a mobile-based game that only requires a smartphone and stable internet connection.
In 2019, a local television broadcaster introduced Hado Pilipinas, an augmented reality-based dodgeball sport where schools competed for a national title. The program, however, was later discontinued.
This raises the question: how can more complex phygital disciplines such as basketball and football—sports that require courts or fields alongside PC setups for their digital components—be introduced locally?
"I’m not in doubt with the potential of phygital in the Philippines. This will take off because in some ways, it’s pretty easy to implement, it doesn’t necessarily require a lot to do it,” he said.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be in the capital, the cities—it can also be in more rural and countryside areas to implement this concept.”
For Hatt, the answer starts in schools.
He believes phygital sports are “easy to implement” and could be integrated into Physical Education programs.
In fact, schools like Lyceum Philippines already incorporate HADO as part of their Bachelor of Science in Esports program.
"This is definitely something that we very much hope will also be a spinoff of PE."
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Gillian Trinidad began her career in the industry as a content producer before finding her voice as a feature writer.
She has covered a wide range of competitions—from esports titles like League of Legends, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, and VALORANT to traditional sports and entertainment, including the WWE, PBA, and Gilas Pilipinas.