Digital Environments as the New Arena - Where’s Equestrianism Heading?
(Star Stable 2025)
For many young people today, the first encounter with a sport is starting to happen digitally. Equestrian culture has not yet fully embraced these digital spaces in a diverse way. However esporting environments are expanding rapidly as marketing and branding platforms. Esport platforms such:
- FIFA - demonstrate how digital ecosystems can build cultural engagement with physical sporting identities and each can feed into one another , and also how sporting identity for a lot of young people starts in a digital arena first
- F1 simulations - inital access point for those who can't afford to drive before real exposure i.e. Lewis Hamilton sim racing
- Fortnite - shows possibilities for how fashion and popculture can intersect with esporting identity
One of our interviewees, Ola, has been a practitioner in European Equestrian disciplines for 14 years and often engages with Equestrian sporting identity through video games
- She played Star Stable frequently as a child, During COVID lockdowns she returned to it a lot
- She also referenced playing Red Dead Redemption which features Western horse riding as a core mechanic. An access point to Western riding she can't access in the European hemisphere
(Red Dead Redemption, 2020)
If digital spaces such as Esports become the first contact with equestrianism, the architects of these spaces could shape: the future audience, the sport’s cultural identity, the visual language of the sport.