AI Scouting Is Already Replacing People From The Sports Industry

From Gut Instinct to Algorithmic Precision

Intuition was the main thing scouts would rely on when choosing a certain player for their team. Watching their body language and movement without the ball.

Nowadays, you have tools like SkillCorner, Wyscout, and Hudl that ingest thousands of data points per match. Biometrics, reaction times, spring angles, and touches are some of the data points measured.

This data is further used for:

• Predicting injury risk
• Figuring out the performance ceiling
• Pintpointing potential improvements

There are some rumors that Darvin Nunez's recruitment to Liverpool was pushed because of the AI-based data. The NFL is also known to collect every piece of data available to improve the plays and individual performance.

AI’s Point Is Its Weakness

The main advantage of AI is pure logic without any bias towards the players, their family, coaches, or any other connection that can influence the decision for recruitment.

Politics and money are determining factors in many transfers nowadays. AI doesn’t care about that. Coaches also might miss a talent because he’s “too skinny” or doesn’t “look like a leader”.

From AI’s perspective, there are patterns, success, and failure rates. This can be a problem only in a small number of cases when “numbers lied” and intuition prevailed.
 

Are Scouts Really in Danger of Losing Their Jobs?

Well, the short answer is no. If we are talking about the near future, scouts will definitely be decision-makers, and they will still pull the strings. AI can only help prove them right or wrong.

Even if they are wrong about a player, too much is at stake to tell them they are making a mistake based on data. Their answer can always be: “I have a feeling”. And that’s it. The risk of injury of 65% won’t matter to him if he can make a sale for $50+ million and get a solid percentage.

Of course, scouts and managers are not the same, but usually they do both jobs. But, it will only take 1 big team to start relying on AI, to make a global change. Others will follow if they prove human intuition isn’t enough.