Annals of Leisure Research

Immersive Technologies, Mixed Realities and Digital Leisure Spaces

This special issue explores the relationship between immersive technologies, mixed realities and digital leisure spaces. With contemporary leisure activities often deeply shaped, if not potentially determined, by technological advancements and developments, a broader understanding of leisure and technology is required. This special issue looks to probe some of the ways in which technologies underpin, influence, infringe upon and/or furnish creations, opportunities for and expressions of leisure, while also contemplating how these affordances and assemblages materialise and are mobilised for organisers, developers, consumers, and leisure-practitioners in and across diverse leisure settings and spaces.

Specifically, this special issue proposes to unpack and examine how immersive technologies, mixed realities and digital leisure play out in a range of contemporary spaces.

Notably, the special issue seeks to consider how sport and physical education is being shaped by such immersive and mixed reality technologies in terms of:

• Coaching and Refereeing
• For forms of Spectatorship and Fan Engagement 
• For Managing Venues and/or creating Smart Stadium Experiences
• In relation to Teacher Training Tools

How aspects of mixed reality, digital technologies and social justice inform and underpin leisure, such as:

• By influencing and impacting upon environmental concerns
• Being deployed to safeguard eco-systems and to encourage environmentally responsive actions
• How forms of technological mobility have the potential to reshape relationships 
• How immersive digital technologies can redefine notions of equity and power in diverse settings

Finally, smart technologies, mixed reality and mobility also yield new leisure experiences in areas such as events, tourism, dating and outdoor leisure that serve to reconfigure conventional approaches and understandings. Nevertheless, as with all of the technological transformations outlined in this special issue, the ever-evolving innovations and iterations are often imbued with promise and opportunities that can also be underscored by harmful practices, problematic assumptions and a futuristic sense of technological determinism.

The topic of leisure and technology is already well-traversed, notably via digital leisure studies which acknowledges and accounts for the accelerated proliferation of digital technologies, transformations, and hyper-digitalised experiences to create a new lexicon of digital leisure scholarship (Carnicelli et al., 2017; Lawrence, 2023; Redhead, 2015, 2016; Silk et al., 2016). Intriguingly, Lawrence and Crawford (2022) point to a foreclosing of the opportunities that this accelerated culture presupposes, with algorithms, big data and forms of artificial intelligence narrowing and targeting any allegedly unfettered digital leisure experiences on offer. Alternatively, affective traces can also resonate and persist within these socio-technological assemblages, with aspects of digital fandom, virtual leisure and mediatised experiences explored across various leisure settings and spaces (Crawford et al., 2022; Fletcher et al., 2024; Lawrence & Crawford, 2019; Ludvigsen & Petersen-Wagner, 2023; Manoli et al., 2024; Stoney & Fletcher, 2021; Sturm 2020, 2021). Additionally, leisure itself increasingly becomes a technological construct, perceived as a set of digitalised experiences, and can take place in augmented or virtual spaces for participants and practitioners (Green, 2025; Hänninen et al., 2025; Iftikhar et al., 2023; Pizzo et al., 2024; Reed et al., 2023; Reichenberger, 2018; Schmidt, 2021). 

The special issue invites contributions that may draw upon a full range of theoretical and methodological approaches, and with an empirical or conceptual focus. In addition to articles discussing familiar leisure activities such as tourism, sport, events, outdoor life, arts and culture, recreation and entertainment, we are also interested in studies that open the field of leisure studies to new practices and activities. Some of these approaches might draw upon but also extend conceptual understandings of digital leisure as well as forms of datafication, gamification and mediatisation, while perhaps offering utopia/dystopia visions for notions of technological determinism, project the futuristic possibilities of technological innovations, and/or offer insights into an array of broader digital tools and technologies that underpin different leisure participants, practitioners and practices.

References:

Carnicelli, S., McGillivray, D., & McPherson, G. (Eds.). (2017). Digital leisure cultures: Critical perspectives. Routledge. 

Crawford, G., Fenton, A., Chadwick, S., & Lawrence, S. (2022). ‘All avatars aren’t we’: Football and the experience of football-themed digital content during a global pandemic. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 57(4), 515-531.

Fletcher, T., Sturm, D. & Malcolm, D. (2024). A ‘cannibalised’ cricket event? Mediatisation, innovation and The Hundred. Leisure Studies, 43(1), 31-46.

Green, B. (2025). Splendour XR: Place, experience and liveness at a virtual music festival. Leisure Sciences, 47(5), 958–975.

Hänninen, R., Korpela, V., & Pajula, L. (2025). The paradoxes and pragmatics of digital leisure in later life. Leisure Studies, 44(1), 65–78.

Iftikhar, R., Saud Khan, M. & Pasanchay, K. (2023). Virtual reality tourism and technology acceptance: A disability perspective. Leisure Studies, 42(6), 849-865.

Lawrence, S. (Ed.). (2023). Digital wellness, health and fitness influencers: Critical perspectives on digital guru media. Routledge.

Lawrence, S., & Crawford, G. (Eds.). (2019). Digital football cultures: Fandom, identities and resistance. Routledge.

Lawrence, S., & Crawford, G. (2022). Towards a digital football studies: Current trends and future directions for football cultures research in the post-covid-19 moment. Leisure Studies, 41(1), 56–69. 

Ludvigsen, J., & Petersen-Wagner, R. (2023). From television to YouTube: Digitalised sport mega-events in the platform society. Leisure Studies, 42(4), 615–632.

Manoli, A. E., Dixon, K., & Antonopoulos, G. A. (2024). Football Fan Tokens as a mode of “serious leisure”: unveiling the dual essence of identity and investment. Leisure Studies, 44(2), 294–308.

Muriel, D., & Crawford, G. (2018). Video games as culture. Considering the role and importance of video games in contemporary society. Routledge.

Pizzo, A. D., Fornaciari, C. J., Coyle, P., Varzgani, N., & Pierce, M. (2024). Opening the Metaverse: The Next Frontier in Sport and Leisure. Leisure Sciences.

Redhead, S. (2015). Football and accelerated culture: This modern sporting life. Routledge.

Redhead, S. (2016). Afterword: A new digital leisure studies for theoretical times. Leisure Studies, 35(6), 827–834.

Reed, J., Dunn, C., Beames, S., & Stonehouse, P. (2023). E‘Ride on!’: The Zwift platform as a space for virtual leisure. Leisure Studies, 42(2), 188–202.

Reichenberger, I. (2018). Digital nomads – A quest for holistic freedom in work and leisure. Annals of Leisure Research, 21(3), 364-380.

Schmidt, S. (Ed.), (2021). 21st Century sports: How technologies will change sports in the digital age. Springer.

Silk, M., Millington, B., Rich, E., & Bush, A. (2016). (Re-)thinking digital leisure. Leisure Studies, 35(6), 712–723.   

Stoney, E., & Fletcher, T. (2021). ‘Are fans in the stands an afterthought?’ Sports events, decision-aid technologies and the television match official in rugby union. Communication & Sport, 9(6), 1008–1029 

Sturm, D. (2020). Fans as e-participants? Utopia/Dystopia visions for the future of digital sport fandom. Convergence, 26(4), 841–856.  

Sturm, D. (2021). From idyllic past-time to spectacle of accelerated intensity: Televisual technologies in contemporary cricket. Sport in Society, 24(8), 1305–1321