Global sport is expanding at speed.
Leagues are crossing continents, fixtures are moving into new markets, and travel is now a performance variable that athletes and coaches can’t ignore.
From the NFL opening its season in Brazil, to La Liga playing in the U.S., to the NBA’s expanding global circuit, elite athletes are competing further from home than ever before.
But across all this movement, one question keeps coming up:
Which athletes face the harshest jet lag, and the biggest performance risk?
Below is a clear breakdown of the underlying science, the sports with the most punishing travel demands, and the travel sequences that push human physiology to its limits.
The Real Cause of Jet Lag (It’s Not Just Fatigue)
Jet lag is the result of circadian misalignment – when internal body clocks drift away from local time and performance demands, and as we wrote previously, circadian disruption is one of the most underestimated competitive disadvantages in sport.
The biggest contributors:
- Time zones crossed
Symptoms typically begin after 3+ time zones.
- Direction of travel
Eastward = hardest (roughly 1 day per time zone).
Westward = easier (around 1 day for every 2 time zones).
- Time available to adjust
Competing within 24-48 hours of a major shift is where performance risk spikes.
- Competition schedule
Late kickoffs, early tee-times, red-eyes and overnight returns can compound misalignment.
The result: degraded reaction time, strength, decision-making, emotional regulation, and recovery.
Sports With the Heaviest Travel Loads
Golf & Tennis: Permanent Mild Jet Lag
Multi-tour golfers and tennis players can hit the Americas → Europe → Middle East → Asia in a 3-4 week window.
They compete within days of arrival.
Full acclimatisation is rarely possible.
NBA: Chronic Circadian Disruption
82 games.
Coast-to-coast swings.
Inconsistent scheduling.
International fixtures layered on top.
NBA athletes endure some of the most repetitive, cumulative circadian strain in sport.
A single season can include:
50,000+ miles
30-40+ time-zone transitions
Multiple long West Coast road swings
This is chronic, not acute, and it adds up.
MLB: The Most Researched Jet Lag League
Across two decades of data, MLB shows a clear performance decline linked to eastward travel:
- Pitchers allow more home runs.
- A significant reduction in doubles, triples, stolen bases, and an increase in double plays.
- Home-field advantage drops when teams return from eastward trips
This is one of the strongest evidence-based cases of travel harming competitive performance.
NFL: Low Frequency, Brutal Shock Loads
NFL teams don’t travel often, but when they do, the demands can be extreme.
A typical London scenario:
- Fly Friday
- Land Saturday morning
- Kickoff Sunday
- 5–8 hour shift
- Under 48 hours to adjust
These are high-intensity, poorly timed, uncompromising shifts.
Under-the-Radar Travel Killers
Super Rugby
NZ ↔ Australia ↔ South Africa ↔ Japan – often 7–11 hours, multiple times per month.
Track & Field
Global meets in Asia and the Middle East create tough eastward loads for European and American athletes.
Smaller Leagues
Such as 3×3 basketball, face many of the same travel challenges as major sports, but with far fewer resources and in cases, more demanding schedules. Take the new global FIBA 3×3 basketball circuit as an example: teams move between multiple countries, across continents, in the space of just a few weeks. It’s one of the most disruptive and exhausting travel models in professional sport.
College Athletes: The Hidden Jet Lag Crisis
College athletes may be the least prepared for circadian disruption.
Why:
- They skew towards later chronotypes (biologically later sleepers)
- Early lifts, early classes, varying game times, all fight their biology
- Eastward travel hits young athletes harder
- Academic stress reduces recovery time
- Sleep pressure builds faster
Performance drops affect not just sport, but:
- Memory & learning
- Emotional regulation
- Reaction time
- Injury risk
- Immune function
This is a major, under-discussed population.
Formula 1: The Most Extreme Travel Calendar in Sport
F1 remains on its own level:
- 24 races
- 23 countries
- 5 continents
- Multiple back-to-backs
- Base of operations usually in Western Europe
- The Vegas → Qatar Back-to-Back
One of the toughest sequences in modern sport:
- Europe → Las Vegas (8–9h west):
- A night race aligned with local time makes adaptation harder.
- Las Vegas → Qatar (~11h east):
- Almost no turnaround. Huge performance risk window.
Optimal strategy:
- Delay (stay up late, view bright light into the late eve) into Vegas → continue delaying into Qatar.
- Humans adapt to delays faster than advances.
- This approach shortens total adaptation time.
So… Who Has It Worst?
Acute (Shock) Loads
- Formula 1
- NFL international games
- Golf / Tennis global swings
Chronic (Cumulative) Loads
- NBA
- MLB
- NHL road cycles
Under-Recognised Risk Groups
- Super Rugby
- World Athletics
- 3×3 Basketball
- College athletes
Jet lag is no longer a travel inconvenience – it’s a performance variable.
And as pro sport becomes even more global, managing circadian alignment will become a decisive competitive edge.
The Competitive Edge Starts With Alignment
Phaze helps high-performance organisations and athletes align their body clocks with the demands of competition, using personalised, science-led sleep and travel strategies grounded in circadian biology.
If travel is already causing fatigue, inconsistency or performance drops, the good news is that these risks are entirely manageable.
For performance staff, understanding which athletes face the biggest loads and when, is the first step to building a travel protocol that actually works in the real world.