Month: January 2024

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The Sevilla FC Innovation Center is now an authorized sports education center

The Innovation Center of Sevilla FC will be able to provide special sports education as it has received official authorization as an Authorized Sports Education Center. In this way, it will be able to offer post-compulsory studies with a variable duration depending on the degree and sports modality, aimed at preparing students for professional activity at different levels and specialties, with the necessary knowledge and skills to develop their work as sports technicians in the specialty of football.

These titles are the only official academic qualifications recognized in the sports field, replacing the previous training for sports coaches and monitors, with academic and professional validity throughout the national territory. They are offered by authorized private sports education centers (CAED) and by the Andalusian Institute of Sport (IAD). They also offer the possibility of direct entry into university studies if one holds the title of Senior Sports Technician. Regarding football, the Sevilla FC Innovation Center will be able to provide various coaching courses, granting students a valid qualification to practice as such throughout the national territory. Consequently, it will allow the club to train the coaches of the future, who will receive a theoretical-practical learning experience within the context of a professional elite football club.

This is another step in the growth of this platform where all the innovation proposals that Sevilla FC offers to the world of sports converge, as a result of the promotion and development of R&D&I projects, and a demonstration of the club’s commitment to the development of talent and professional profiles of all those who wish to train and improve their skills with the Sevilla FC seal.

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The President and the CEO of Gangwon visit Sevilla FC

Sevilla Football Club continues to strengthen ties with Gangwon FC. The president of the Korean club, Kim Byung-ji, and its general director, Kim Tae Joo, made an official visit last weekend in which they could get to know the club and its working methodology more closely. A new step in an agreement that once again shows Sevilla FC’s commitment to the club’s internationalization process.

“We believe that this collaboration agreement with Sevilla FC, which has a lot of football knowledge, will be an important step in bringing positive advances in terms of management and the philosophy of our club,” explained the highest authority of the Korean club. The president of Sevilla FC, José María del Nido Carrasco, received both leaders in the honor box of the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán and presented them with a jersey signed by the entire squad and a souvenir of the visit. They also attended the authorities’ box during the 22nd round of LaLiga against Osasuna and participated in the customary pre-match directors’ meal. They also had the opportunity to greet some of the first team players like Sergio Ramos.

“It is an honor to be able to work hand in hand with Gangwon FC. I am sure that this agreement will allow both entities to grow, which share a determined commitment to growth based on technological development and young talent. We are talking about a club, Sevilla FC, which is a technological reference in the world of football, and a country, South Korea, which according to recent studies is a world leader in innovation and digital technologies. This is a decisive step in our Internationalization Plan,” assured the president of Sevilla.

“The most significant thing has been that we have been able to know the vision that the club has for its new projects such as the training of international players, courses in different areas of club management, and I take away a good feeling and ideas for the future of Gangwon FC,” highlighted his Korean counterpart. Within the visit itself, the two leaders also held working meetings at the José Ramón Cisneros Palacios Sports City, where they learned firsthand about the day-to-day life of the club and its facilities, and plans were also drawn up for training both players and employees of Gangwon.

“Sevilla FC has more than 100 years of history, and has great achievements in its record, such as its 7 Europa League trophies. It has followed a long journey of progress in different aspects such as player development and club management. We hope that Gangwon FC can also follow a similar growth trajectory, and that our employees can learn a lot by visiting Sevilla FC in the future,” assured the president, who was a professional goalkeeper and represented South Korea in the memorable 2002 World Cup. Likewise, the representatives of the Asian entity learned all the details of the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán and showed great interest in the construction process of the new stadium planned for 2026. For its part, Gangwon wanted to take advantage of the visit to explain to Sevillistas what their club is like: “Gangwon FC was founded in 2008 and is a club that represents the province of Gangwon. Our goal is to grow and contribute to the unity of our province’s citizens. And we hope to improve talent development hand in hand with Sevilla FC, and that our young players can unleash their potential thanks to this collaboration.”

In Korean football, the visit made by Sevilla for the preseason in 2022 left a mark, so much so that they consider it a turning point in attracting new clubs to their country to carry out this type of concentration: “The impression that Korean fans have of Sevilla FC is that it is a historic, renowned club. Sevilla FC made a great impact in Korea on the tour two years ago, and that made more renowned clubs visit Korea. We hope that something similar can be repeated in the future.”

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“Scout Advisor” gains worldwide recognition following its presentation at the IBM TechXchange Summit.

Sevilla FC continues to solidify its position as a pioneering club in the application of cutting-edge technology in the world of football following the launch of the Scout Advisor tool. The application was globally unveiled this Tuesday at the IBM TechXchange Summit being held in Barcelona. The presentation was one of the focal points of interest at the event taking place this week in the Catalan city, where Sevilla FC’s Data Director, Elías Zamora, unveiled the project’s details alongside IBM’s Vice President, Dinesh Nirmal, who hosted the event wearing the Sevilla jersey. Scout Advisor is built on ‘watsonx,’ IBM’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data platform for businesses, at the express request of Sevilla FC, and it expands the catalog of tools already available to the entity, such as AiFootball and AiScouting.

The unveiling of Scout Advisor has sparked interest from media outlets worldwide and in some of the most important markets in the global economy. In this regard, renowned technology and industry publications worldwide like Forbes have taken notice, highlighting in their coverage that “Sevilla revolutionizes player recruitment with artificial intelligence.” Additionally, communication giants like Fox News in the United States have sought to share with their readers the advancements this innovative application can offer to the club. The American publication details the complete functioning of this innovation in an article titled: “How Sevilla FC uses IBM’s Watsonx to improve its player evaluation process.” Meanwhile, Expansión in Mexico highlights the “evolution” in the way of signing players that Scout Advisor represents, while Infobae, one of the publications with the widest reach in South America, describes the Sevilla FC’s new technological tool as “revolutionary.” In China, Sohu, one of the country’s most-read media outlets, points out that “Sevilla launches innovative tools based on IBM Watsonx,” while the Korean media outlet Naver highlights the arrival of AI-generated solutions to a yet unexplored field like football.

In particular, Scout Advisor will facilitate the day-to-day work of the sports management in streamlining and improving the efficiency of the information retrieval process in a database containing over 200,000 reports. The impact of the launch of this tool has also been felt in European countries such as Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, and Denmark. As for Asia, Sevilla FC’s new technological innovation has made waves not only in Korea and China but also in one of India’s most prestigious media outlets, The Times of India, in a country known for its advancements in technology. Scout Advisor has also piqued interest across the Atlantic with features in sports as well as generalist media outlets in Mexico and the United States, while garnering special attention in South America, particularly in Colombia, Argentina, Peru, and Chile.

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Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán Stadium will once again host the opening session of the “Sports Data Forum 2024”.

Once again this year, Sports Data Campus and Sevilla FC will go hand in hand in the launch of the Sports Data Forum 2024. As usual, this training event, which will run from 21 March to 24 June, will be launched at the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán with a very interesting face-to-face session. It will cover topics related to technology in football, such as data at the service of sports management, data analysis in professional football, data at the service of the coaching staff, physical preparation and AI in sport.

The Sports Data Forum is organised by Sevilla FC, Sports Data Campus and the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM), with which the club has a fruitful agreement through the Sevilla FC Innovation Center. Although more speakers for this attractive initial session will be announced as the weeks go by, the Sevilla FC president, José María del Nido Carrasco, the sporting director, Víctor Orta, the head of Data Football, Jesús Olivera, as well as the head of R+D+i, José María Cruz Gallardo, have confirmed their participation. Details of the event, as well as how to attend this inaugural session, will be made available on the official website of the event.

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Sevilla FC presents Scout Advisor at the IBM Techxchange Summit 2024

Sevilla FC was present this Tuesday at the opening of the prestigious IBM TechXchange Summit, one of the most important technological congresses whose 2024 edition is taking place in Barcelona. An unbeatable opportunity to present Scout Advisor, the innovative Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool that the club will use to identify and characterise players based on the natural language present in the scouting reports generated by its scouts, to an audience of more than 1,500 people.

Built on ‘watsonx’, IBM’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data platform for enterprises, Scout Advisor is being developed at the express request of Sevilla FC and complements its AiFootball and AiScouting tools by integrating with them in the future. Elías Zamora, data director of Sevilla FC, was in charge of presenting Scout Advisor on the main stage of the convention, together with the vice-president of IBM, Dinesh Nirmal, who had travelled to Spain and was wearing a Sevilla FC shirt for the occasion. They inaugurated the three-day event.

Scout Advisor makes it possible to automatically identify and characterise players based on textual information from hundreds of thousands of scouting reports. “We have probably the most extensive player database in football and now with Scout Advisor the process of searching and finding talent among so many reports will be much more accurate and faster. Generative artificial intelligence allows us to process the subjective aspects described with human language in its different forms and not only the objective data,” explained Elías Zamora.

The alliance between Sevilla FC and IBM confirms the club’s commitment to technological development, which has made it a reference in innovation in the world of football. In this sense, IBM did not hesitate to propose this collaboration with an entity, Sevilla FC, which it considers to be one of those high-level companies that create value and use technological innovation to transform the business, as admitted both Dinesh Nirmal this Tuesday in Barcelona and Fernando Suárez, director of Software in Spain for IBM, in the presentation to the media last week in Seville.

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Transforming Player Scouting with IBM’s Generative IA


Together with IBM, we are delighted to unveil Scout Advisor, an innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool that the club will use to provide its scouting team with comprehensive data when it comes to the identification and evaluation of potential player signings. Built on ‘watsonx’, IBM’s AI and data platform designed for businesses, the club proposed the Scout Advisor concept with the aim of incorporating it into its pre-existing, in-house developed suite of data-generative tools.

The club’s data department has been working for months with IBM’s Client Engineering team to build this latest application, using natural language processing and the base ‘watsonx’ models to search for and analyse massive amounts of information present in its scouting database. This includes both quantitative data, such as height and weight, speed, number of goals or minutes played, and unstructured qualitative data, such as the written analysis included in its more than 200,000 scouting reports.

The solution’s natural language processing (NLP) capabilities have enabled the club to use multiple large language models (LLMs) to help improve the accuracy and efficiency of player identification. Using cues from the club’s scouts describing the key characteristics of players being assessed, Scout Advisor generates curated lists of candidates based on the traits being sought and summarises the full set of reports for each individual player. In addition, Scout Advisor links each player to our current database to produce further detailed information on their quantitative performance data.

Scout Advisor reduces the time needed and provides crucial support when it comes to making key decisions

Traditionally, player recruitment has been based on a combination of subjective human observation and data analysis. However, these measures have various restrictions given the amount of time they take and only consider a limited number of factors. Now, IBM’s Scout Advisor tools offers us a competitive advantage, combining those existing indicators with generative AI to close the gap between metric-based scouting and human behaviours that are hard to measure. This will improve our ability to identify talent and help in our decision-making processes.

Our scouting team is widely renowned for its data-based recruitment of emerging stars; yet, the club is also a pioneer in developing its own methods of using detailed information to gage a more rounded profile of each player we scout. IBM watsonx nurtures this data and communicates it in digestible terms, identifying possible signings based on key qualitative indicators and expert scouting opinion.

“Technology is part of the club’s DNA”

José María del Nido Carrasco, our club president, expressed that this step forward will mean that “our scouting and analysis teams are committed to finding the best players and young talent that will help the team and the club develop. They have worked tirelessly to build an impressive bank of data that will aid us to make informed decisions. Now, with IBM’s support, we can use this to its full potential. We are delighted to work with IBM, knowing that this project could be revolutionary not only within our club, but also throughout the sporting industry. It gives us a significant advantage in the recruitment process, allowing us to get the best fit for the team. We strongly believe that this collaboration will have a positive impact on sport in general. This is a clear indication of our intention to show that technology is not only an object, it is a powerful and helpful tool on our journey to the future. It will form a key part of our DNA.”

Ana Paula de Assis, Chair and General Manager EMEA at IBM, recognises the pride of “collaborating with Sevilla FC to use the full extent of ‘watsonx’ generative AI in order to help and to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the recruitment process. With the correct use, AI continues to change the rules of the game for businesses across all sectors.” Horacio Morell, President of IBM Spain, Portugal, Greece and Israel, explained that “at IBM we are very excited for this collaboration with Sevilla FC so that we can transform the process of signing new players and unlock the full potential of data analysis. This is a clear demonstration of how ‘watsonx’ can help companies through AI to gain a competitive advantage.”

Our collaboration with IBM is a fundamental part of our business strategy moving forward, with the intention of using AI to assist sporting operations. Integrating ‘watsonx’ into the current system will allow us to increase our ROI and make better, quicker and more informed decisions.

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List of finally accepted works for the III Manuel Blasco Garzón Award

The ‘Sevilla FC Chair: University, Business, and Sport’ at Pablo de Olavide University (UPO) opened the reception period for works for the III edition of the Manuel Blasco Garzón Award on November 20. Through this award, excellence is recognized in the best Bachelor’s and Master’s degree projects presented by students enrolled at UPO, both in official programs and in continuing education. With this initiative, Sevilla FC, through its Innovation Center, aims to promote study, research initiation, and knowledge transfer in various fields of knowledge. The list of finally accepted works can be consulted at this link.

The Manuel Blasco Garzón Award pays tribute to the memory of the former president of Sevilla FC, under whose leadership the club won two Copa de Andalucía trophies, hired the first doctor in the club’s history, organized the first team gatherings, and secured the Reina Victoria Stadium as the venue for the Copa de España final, contested between FC Barcelona and Club Arenas de Guecho. Not to mention that he welcomed into his board a young man destined to write the club’s finest chapters: Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán. Blasco Garzón was also a ubiquitous figure in Sevillian social and cultural life at the time, serving, among other positions, as president of the Ateneo de Sevilla and promoting projects aimed at bringing cultural standards to neighborhoods and contributing to citizens’ education, aiding the fight against illiteracy.

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New official social media accounts launched in portuguese

Our international brand expansion continues to grow. After a record-breaking 2023, where we became the fourth most followed team in Spain in terms of social media followers, and reached the top 15 in Europe with 18 million total followers, we have begun 2024 by launching new accounts for our Portuguese-speaking fans on Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter). We will provide specific content in Portuguese on these accounts, allowing fans to get even closer to the club with Brazil is among our most important countries for international fans, together with the Middle East, North Africa, China, India and Mexico. 

Our President, José María del Nido Carrasco, announced during his inauguration our aims to grow the brand and continue our internationalisation strategy, with Brazil being a key focus. “Brazil is one of the countries that we have highlighted as having high strategic value for us. We want to connect directly and clearly with the Brazilian audience, with whom we feel very linked thanks to the extensive list of great Brazilian footballers we have historically had. Digital strategy is essential for this, with expansion through social media being one of the most important tools at our disposal. Sevilla FC is a global brand with a cumulative worldwide audience of hundreds of millions of people. We understand that our club’s growth must be consolidated with a greater presence in international markets and we want to continue the excellent results that we have been achieving,” he added. 

Some of the recent content on the accounts focused on one of the most legendary Brazilian players in our history, Fernando Reges, who was recently given a guard of honour at the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán following his departure. 

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Sevilla FC and Gangwon FC join forces in a new international strategic alliance.

​Sevilla FC and Gangwon FC have entered into a strategic alliance agreement through which both clubs intend to advance their respective development plans. Under the ‘World Club Alliance Program’ model offered by Sevilla FC’s Innovation Center, the Korean club will receive advice for the development and improvement of all its football departments, benefiting from the experience and knowledge that Sevilla FC possesses. Sevilla FC, through this alliance, will strengthen the strategic positioning of its brand in a country of high interest such as South Korea, which is key to its ambitious Internationalisation Plan. 

​Gangwon FC’s intention is to make a leap in quality at all levels and this strategic plan fits perfectly with Sevilla FC’s commitment to share with third parties, who are not direct competitors, all its knowledge, experience and wisdom acquired during its 134-year history, and more recently after years of developing a clear training methodology for the academy, educating players and coaches and applying technological tools. 

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​Sevilla FC President, José María del Nido Carrasco, values the importance of this strategic step: “It is an honour to be able to work hand in hand with Gangwon FC. I am sure that this agreement will allow both entities, who share a firm commitment to growth based on technological development and young talent, to grow. We are talking about a club, Sevilla FC, which is a technological reference in the world of football, and a country, South Korea, which according to the latest studies is a world leader in innovation and digital technologies. This is a decisive step in our Internationalisation Plan”. 

​The ‘World Club Alliance Program’ format, already implemented with Bengaluru United FC of India, perfectly fulfils this proposal. In this way, Gangwon FC will benefit from the knowledge accumulated by Sevilla FC, mainly in its R+D+i and technology projects developed in recent years, which have made the club an international reference in this field. In this sense, the agreement will allow the establishment of partnerships to promote mutual development in terms of technological innovation applied to football in a country that is a world leader in technology. 

​Gangwon FC President Byung Ji Kim highlighted the impact of this partnership for the Asian club: “Sevilla FC is one of the most important clubs in Europe and the world and has been able to develop on its own, using its own strategy and philosophy. It has grown through the development of star players to become the Kings of the Europa League. It is the inspiration for what Gangwon FC intends to do, I am sure that this agreement will allow it and I hope that this cooperation will be long-lasting.” 

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​Sevilla FC and South Korea 

​Sevilla FC will help the Asian club to learn how to spot young talent in South Korea, provide intensive training programmes both in Sevilla and Gangwon for Korean footballers looking to improve their skills and abilities, as well as coaches for different age groups at the club, and will advise them on the creation and development of an R+D+i department applied to football, following the successful model of Sevilla FC. 

​This is not the first time that Korean football and Sevilla FC have joined forces. Just a few months ago, 25 coaches from the Korean Football Association (KFA) spent ten days attending conferences, training days and youth training sessions at the Ciudad Deportiva José Ramón Cisneros Palacios to learn from Sevilla FC’s methodology and technological development.​