The Thang Long Warriors Basketball Club, representing Vietnam, achieved a stunning victory by clinching the championship title at the Games of Future (Future Games) after consistently defeating strong opponents in the international Phygital Basketball Invitational tournament.
In the semi-final match, the Thang Long Warriors quartet—comprising Đặng Thái Hưng, Nguyễn Anh Hào, Lê Hoàng Quân, and Phạm Nhật Thái Quang—faced off against Cuba’s ADEC team. The match was highly engaging, with the Vietnamese players delivering an impressive performance. The exceptional play of Đặng Thái Hưng and Đặng Nhật Thái Quang was instrumental in securing their spot in the final with a tight 6-5 score.
In the championship game on February 27, Thang Long Warriors met Libertadores Phygital from Venezuela, the top-ranked team in Group B, which boasted players with superior physical stature. Yet, the Thang Long Warriors once again demonstrated their resolve and relentless desire to win, defeating the Venezuelan side with a final score of 35-31 to claim the coveted title.
Phygital Sports: Bridging the Digital and Physical
The Games of Future is an international club-level tournament for Phygital Sports, a burgeoning trend driven by digital transformation that combines esports (digital sports) and traditional physical sports. This achievement is highly encouraging for the Thang Long Warriors, already a leading team in the Vietnam Basketball Association (VBA), and marks a significant opening for the development of the Phygital sports movement in Vietnam.
Congratulating the Vietnamese Phygital Basketball team, Mr. Nguyễn Xuân Cường, President of the Vietnam Recreational and Electronic Sports Association (VIRESA), emphasized: “The achievement and experience gained from participating in the Games of the Future provide Vietnam with a better opportunity to grasp the trend of combining esports and traditional sports. This paves the way for developing new events and tournaments in the future, giving young people a chance to access new trending competition methods and attracting significant attention from the community and related ecosystems.”
Mr. Cường further commented: “Phygital Sports is a combination of superior, contemporary advantages that integrate physical activity into the digital sports environment and vice versa, adding digital skills to facilitate digital transformation in traditional sports. We believe the Phygital sports model has immense potential for development in Vietnam, helping to realize high-performance sports goals while also stimulating digital economic growth by approaching sports as an economic sector.”
The Games of the Future 2024 took place from February 24 in Kazan, Russian Federation. As the pinnacle international club event for Phygital Sports globally, it featured 21 sporting disciplines combining esports and physical activity. This year, Vietnam only competed in the Phygital Basketball Invitational, which ran from February 24–26, 2024.
