Enhanced Games: Is Augmented Sports the Ultimate Shift to a Limitless Market? This is the question answered by Jean-François Bourg, “Enhanced Games, Diminishing Sport,” in this issue of Etudes, March 2026, No. 4335, pp. 29-39. Behind the promise of records and innovation, Enhanced Games represent a profound transformation of global sports. At the intersection of the financialization of sports entertainment, transhumanist ambitions, and a radical libertarian vision, this project questions both the international sports order and the role of humans in the pursuit of performance.
Far from being a marginal event, Enhanced Games are part of a structuring intellectual and political dynamic, driven notably by figures close to the Trumpian current and libertarian capitalism. The project aims to challenge the mechanisms of international sports regulation – embodied by the IOC and WADA – in the name of individual liberty and scientific innovation.
According to Jean-François Bourg, this also contributes to an increased financialization of sports entertainment, conceived as a global market to be conquered, where performance becomes a product and the athlete a vector of investment. By allowing unlimited augmentation technologies and medicalization of performance, Enhanced Games also embody a transhumanist and post-humanist vision of sports, based on the endless perfectibility of the human body.
Beyond the sports issues, these “Enhanced Games” pose a fundamental question: should we adapt humanity to the demands of an ever more competitive and commercialized sport, or rethink the very purpose of sports itself? It is ultimately the balance between performance, regulation, and humanity that is being questioned.
Article posted online with the author’s and publisher’s permission Jean-François Bourg, “Enhanced Games, Diminishing Sport,” in this issue of Etudes, March 2026, No. 4335, pp. 29-39.
