Your early predictions for sports entertainments' 2022 season?

Dear sport entertainment fans in the Giant Bomb forums!

We have about a few more days until the end of 2021 while we're approaching 2022 so I would like to see you share your predictions of sports entertainment events such as soccer, basketball, etc.

My expectations:

• Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen are going to have their rivalries in Formula 1 yet again.
• Formula 1's 2022 season cars are going to be awesome as they have their new & very futuristic exterior designs.
• Peugeot 9x8 Le Mans Hyper Car is going to have good runs for WEC Le Mans despite being rear wingless.
• Shane Van Gisbergen is likely to dominate in Supercar Championship yet again.
• Ford Puma Rally1 is going to be a good rally car for WRC.

I'm confused by the title, since F1's neither a) a sport, nor b) entertaining.

j/k ofc. :P

I watch sports, so I'll play:

1. Tom Brady will likely win another Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I hope not, but it will likely happen. At least it's no longer the New England Patriots even though they are doing better this year and might make the playoffs.

2. There will be more Boxing and MMA upsets like they were this year. Too many examples to list them all, but the latest one was Amanda Nunez, easily the best woman's MMA fighter of all time losing in a shocking upset.

3. The Winter Olympics will be interesting with the Covid still going on, and America's symbolic boycott of it taking place in China.

4. I believe the next generation of Tennis stars on the Men's side will start to take over, and the big three of the past decade or so will finally fade away, but they will go out fighting. Especially, Djokovic who still has a couple of years left in him. On the woman's side, things will remain pretty much how they are now, with no real pro dominating since prime Serena Williams, including Williams herself who is now past her prime.

5. eSports of all kinds will comeback in a big way with live events, which has already started to happen for many games at the end of this year.

Edit: Forgot Baseball and Basketball:

6. The LA Dodgers will once again make a strong run during the regular season and post season, but still won't win a full season World Series.

7. The winner of the NBA Finals will be an underdog team not on many people's radar. All the usual suspects will somehow come up short.

Lol. New England is my team, and I think they are now pretty much out of it unless everyone else screws up. But, I'd like Brady to go to the Super Bowl again if only to show Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick that they pulled the parachute too early on Brady. Bill Belichick is a cranky old SOB, and tht why New Engalnders like him, but he is going to go down in history as fumbling Brady's exit. He shoudl have never allowe dthe question if ist was "Him" or "Tom" taht mattered...now we all know Tom mattered just that bit more.

NFL: Since I believe the reality is that we’ll have an incredibly lose-lose championship between the Bucs and Patriots, I’d rather offer up my dumbest prediction: an 8-9 team is going to make it to the Super Bowl.

NHL: The Minnesota Wild are finally going to break through in the playoffs, making it to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in franchise history… only to lose in 6 games to a team everyone outside of their respective fanbases is completely sick of (either the Tampa Bay Lightning or Pittsburgh Penguins).

NBA: Golden State turns back the clock and conpletely dominates the entire playoff field, losing only 3 games the entire tournament.

MLB: Buck Showalter, newly minted manager of the New York Mets, gets within one win of his coveted World Series victory, only to watch it go his former New York Yankees in 7 games.

World Cup: fuck is that in 2022? The USA manages to qualify for the tourney, only to get absolutely kicked in during the round robin phase with 3 losses and a -11 goal differential, finishing even lower than the host team.

1. Newcastle United will not go nuts in the January transfer window, despite their untold Arabian wealth.
2. Lewis Hamilton wins his 8th title. Although Adrian Newey with some new regs might throw this prediction on its head.
3. Christian Eriksen joins Ajax as the only club that could realistically let him play again with a defibrillator. It won't go great and he'll probably retire shortly afterwards.
4. The MotoGP power vacuum will continue with Peco Bagnaia winning his first title.
5. Tyson Fury wins all the belts.
6. I have no idea how the World Cup will go other than Qatar being genuinely atrocious.

Wasn't "sports entertainment" a term invented by the pro wrestling industry because they couldn't legally call scripted content a sport?

I mostly just watch Hockey and Baseball these days. And extreme sports like skateboarding and snowboarding when they're on. I got into MLB back in 2016. I was already 29 then and used to hate baseball growing up. I got into MLB The Show that same year which is what fueled my interest. Here we are a few years later and I don't even think I would care if the league just died next year. The Field of Dreams game was maybe the pinnacle event of my time watching.

Looking at the current landscape and the utter amount of ego the league has created is sickening. Handing 300 mil contracts to guys with barely a full season under their belt is asinine to me. And the players want even more. The players are certainly the ones who bring in the money at the end of the day but the fact that they aren't even talking about funneling more money into the minors, where guys truly struggle just to stay afloat is lunacy. Sports, like the video game industry these days imo, have given me plenty of reasons to just leave them behind and never look back.

I was definitely expecting this to be a WWE thread based on the title. I can't recall hearing the term "sports entertainment" used in any other context, even with other pro wrestling promotions.

The NBA Finals will either be a rematch of the '21 Finals, or GSW against Milwaukee (the Nets aren't getting out of the East without Kyrie Irving playing full time/being vaccinated). Basketball is the only sport I follow with any kind of regularity, and even then it's pretty sporadic...

And in the form that most will know as 'sports entertainment', Wrestlemania will heavily focus (too much so, as they always do) on part-timers, and that company will keep trying for mainstream hits in spite of itself. I honestly see AEW becoming the No. 1 wrestling company by the end of '22, in all aspects. One could argue they're absolutely there from a quality of product perspective, but they could eclipse WWE financially/ratings-wise as well. The big prediction: Vince is out by the end of '22, by HOOK or by crook (pun absolutely intended :)).

I also think that Wrestle Kingdom 16 will be a return to form for NJPW, despite the 3 night format (which might be a bit much...), assuming the matches are up to snuff. Maybe a 'reverse' forbidden door and The Elite crash the party, with Omega challenging either Jay White or Will Ospreay (assuming he's close enough to return, which I don't think he is, so sub Omega out for Adam Cole [BAY BAY]) and Bryan Danielson challenging Shingo Takagi for the IWGP title...