👀 Beyond Human Eyes: Transforming NFL & Premier League Decision Making with Natural Language and AI.

Welcome to the eighth edition of The Sports Stack! This week's edition is our second bite-sized edition, but don’t worry it’s still packed full of interesting content!

In this week’s edition, we’ll cover:

• The Silicon Playbook: How AI is Transforming Sports Performance Analytics.

• Inside the NFL's AI Revolution: How AWS is Reshaping the Combine.

• Natural Language Coaching: How AWS and TSG Hoffenheim Are Changing Football Analytics.

• The Future of Officiating: Technology's Growing Role in Game-Day Decisions.

• The Numbers Game: Quantifying AI's Impact on Sports by 2030.

• Quick Hits: This Week’s Stories & Updates.

👩🏻‍💻 The Silicon Playbook: How AI is Transforming Sports Performance Analytics.

• Vast amounts of sports data can now be captured, transformed, and analysed in record time, leading to real-time decision-making and new insights not previously possible. 

• With natural language prompts, the barriers to accessing these vast data lakes and insights are being lowered. As you will see in the AWS Hoffenheim example, non-technical coaching staff can make smarter decisions through natural language questions.

• Importantly, as advanced analytics and athlete performance continue to improve, we are beginning to see technological advancements directed at refereeing and gameplay decision-making. It’s vital that as athletes' performance improves, the quality of decision-making scales with it. 

• The impact extends far beyond the sidelines. Front offices are revolutionising their talent acquisition strategies by combining traditional scouting with AI-powered projections that can identify undervalued players with specific attributes; think Moneyball on steroids. 

• Financially, these advancements represent a significant investment, but early adopters find ROI through performance gains and new commercial opportunities, selling anonymised insights to media partners or creating premium content experiences for fans, as we will discuss with the Hoffenheim example.

Let’s get into it.

🏈 Inside the NFL's AI Revolution: How AWS is Reshaping the Combine.

The NFL’s new combine IQ dashboard, powered by Next Gen Stats, was launched last week for the first time.

How does it work, and what does it do?

• Combine IQ leverages RFID sensors worn by athletes to collect biometric data at 0.1-second intervals during drills. This data is processed through a real-time pipeline, enabling near-instant updates to the dashboard within minutes of drill completion. Fans, analysts, and teams can access metrics like split times, top speed, acceleration rates, and positional benchmarks almost immediately. 

• The platform introduces an innovative "Draft Score," which combines multiple data sources—athletic performance metrics from drills, historical Combine data (dating back to 2003), college stats, and expert evaluations. 

• Built with Amazon QuickSight's Highcharts integration, Combine IQ offers dynamic visualisations that adjust based on player positions and metrics. I absolutely love this visual layout - it’s fun to flick through the different positions and see instantly who is leading.

Why is this important?

For Teams:

• Combine IQ equips teams with more precise tools for evaluating talent, reducing reliance on subjective assessments.

For Fans: 

• By making advanced analytics accessible to the public, the platform creates greater fan engagement and understanding of the Combine's importance in shaping NFL rosters and potentially future fantasy line ups. 

For the League: 

• The platform enhances the NFL's brand as a leader in sports technology. Providing access like Combine IQ sets the bar for other leagues and continues to drive innovation for the NFL. 

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⚽ Natural Language Coaching: How AWS and TSG Hoffenheim Are Changing Football Analytics.

With AWS and SAP, TSG Hoffenheim developed a groundbreaking football match analysis system that leverages generative AI to provide coaches and analysts with unprecedented tactical insights. 

• The system allows match analysts to search video archives using natural language queries. For example, analysts can type questions like "Show me all scenes where TSG had a shot at goal from a counter-attack" and receive instant results.

• The platform features a split-screen view that merges live match footage with tactical visualisations. This provides insights into team formations and player movements by overlaying positioning data onto game footage. Below, the analyst can quickly see when possession was lost before a goal, with a real-time tactical overlay, allowing the coach to make in-game adjustments.

• Leveraging Amazon Bedrock, the platform demonstrates an advanced understanding of football terminology and tactical concepts. This AI capability enables the platform to interpret complex game situations and provide insights beyond simple statistical analysis, offering a deeper tactical understanding. This is really important - so many AI wrappers and layers lack contextual data and only provide high-level insight. 

Why is this important?

For Teams: 

• Significantly reduces the time spent on manual video analysis, allowing coaches and analysts to focus more on strategy development.

• Enables real-time in-play adjustments for coaches.

• Reduces the barrier to access by providing natural language prompt options, meaning all staff and players can effectively use the analysis. 

• Teams generate vast amounts of data that can enhance developments in consumer gaming, e.g. EA Sports FC and Football Manager. Licensing this data opens up new revenue opportunities to assist teams in covering costs and creating profits. 

For Fans:

• In the future, teams could monetise these products, providing fans with unique tactical analysis access and new game angles - this would be an incredible value add for the most die-hard fans. 

For the League:

• Sets a new standard for sports analytics in professional football, potentially driving innovation across the league.

• Could lead to more competitive and tactically sophisticated matches as teams leverage advanced analytics for game preparation and in-game adjustments.

🏆 Hot off the press - AWS won The Sports Business Journal’s ‘Best in Athlete Performance Technology’ award for their work with the NFL in building the Digital Athlete.

⌚ The Future of Officiating: Technology's Growing Role in Game-Day Decisions.

What are the NFL doing? 

• Per Sportico, League officials told reporters on Wednesday that the NFL expects to adopt automated measurement of potential first-down calls in 2025. 

• The technology uses six 8K cameras strategically positioned in the stadiums to track the ball’s location with millimetre-level precision. 

• While Hawk-Eye handles first-down measurements, the traditional chain gang will remain on the sidelines as a backup system in case of technical failures, preserving some of football’s historical traditions while transitioning to modern technology. 

Where else is technology being used to assist with decision-making in games?

• The Premier League are finally adopting Semi-automated offside technology aimed at speeding up offside checks.

• MLB to test automated ball-strike challenge system during spring games.

• This could be argued to be a more lightweight technological advancement - NHL referees are using Apple Watches during games to track the game clock with haptic feedback. 

💸 The Numbers Game: Quantifying AI's Impact on Sports by 2030.

The speed of change in AI is hard to keep up with; and even though it can feel like most sports are taking their time with adoption and being cautious in the right areas “90% of sports executives believe that AI will have a medium or high impact on sports by 2030” Source: Altman Solon.

Given the progress we’re finally witnessing in sports and the tangible benefits that sports are seeing, it’s clear why sports executives hold this belief. Furthermore, according to Altman Solon, the overall AI market is anticipated to grow significantly, with generative AI and the applications built upon it serving as the primary driver.

Predictions:

• As non-generative AI grows to $897 billion by 2030, expect advanced predictive models similar to Citadel's forecasting capabilities to revolutionise injury prevention, potentially reducing team injury rates by 25-30%.

• The 71% CAGR in generative AI from 2021-2023 suggests we'll see a complete transformation in how coaching staff members interact with performance data - natural language interfaces could evolve from simple queries to fully autonomous tactical assistants.

• By 2027-2028, when the AI market reaches approximately $1.4 trillion, expect officiating to become primarily AI-augmented across major sports, with human officials serving in supervisory roles rather than primary decision-makers.

🗞️ Quick Hits: This Week’s Stories & Updates.

• ESPN is embracing user-generated content. Will this be enough to capture the Gen Alpha audience? ESPN will allow users to generate and post their own content in its upcoming flagship app, which will be released later this year.

  • Traditional media has shifted, with individuals becoming 'the media.’ However, quality control issues must be addressed. It will be interesting to see how ESPN handles this.

• Liverpool remains the Premier League’s most engaged club, boasting 1 billion social media engagements in the 2024-2025 season to date.

  • December 2024 saw the club’s largest growth in social media followers this season, with three million new followers across all platforms.

  • It’s not surprising that Liverpool continues to receive recognition; in recent years, they have been at the forefront of experimenting with new forms of content and channels.

  • The impressive engagement figures not only underscore Liverpool's brand strength but also exemplify how sports clubs are evolving into digital content powerhouses.

• IndyCar’s Chip Ganassi Racing will use OpenAI’s tech to inform competition and front office decision-making.

• Last week, we discussed Innovation Labs as a way for leagues and sports organisations to stay ahead of the curve; this week, PSG is announcing its own.

Thanks for reading!