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The club showcases its advancements in artificial intelligence at the Mobile World Congress in collaboration with IBM

Sevilla FC continues to strengthen its position as a technological leader in sports and was present at one of the industry’s key international events, the Mobile World Congress, which took place in Barcelona during the first week of March.

In collaboration with IBM, Sevilla FC participated in the event’s exhibition area, offering an immersive experience that allowed attendees to explore the use of the Scout Advisor tool. Developed by the club together with IBM and its Generative AI platform, WatsonX, this tool provides player performance reports similar to those generated by the club’s scouts. Congress visitors were able to interact with a foosball table powered by generative AI to create these reports, optimizing the collected information and reducing the time required to consult and access data.

Elías Zamora, the club’s head of data, participated in a roundtable discussion about the transformation of football scouting through Generative AI, where he presented the club’s technological projects to industry-leading companies and specialized media, both national and international.

Sevilla FC’s participation in the Mobile World Congress also served to announce that the club has become the first entity in the world to join the AI Alliance, an organization founded by IBM and Meta, which already has over 150 members from companies and academic institutions. The goal is to promote the ethical and open use of Artificial Intelligence. Additionally, both Scout Advisor and Sevilla FC were featured in a blog post by Meta, highlighting the successful use of its Llama 3 model.

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Sevilla FC becomes the first global sports organization to join the AI Alliance

Sevilla Fútbol Club has made history once again by becoming the first sports entity in the world to be invited to join the AI Alliance, a prominent international community that promotes the responsible, ethical, and collaborative development of artificial intelligence (AI), setting global standards for technological innovation. With over 150 member organizations, Sevilla FC positions itself as the first sports entity, solidifying its strong commitment to advancing technology applied to sports.

The AI Alliance was co-founded by IBM and Meta, and includes other major tech players such as Intel, AMD, Oracle, Red Hat, and Sony. Additionally, prestigious universities and academic institutions, such as CERN, EPFL, ETH Zurich, Yale, Cornell, Tokyo, Imperial College London, and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, are part of this initiative.

On a national level, Sevilla FC becomes the fourth Spanish institution to join the AI Alliance, along with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, MLOps Community, and Esade, marking a milestone in the history of sports and technology in Spain. Over the years, Sevilla FC has solidified its leadership in integrating cutting-edge technologies in both sports and business. In sports, the club has developed solutions for player identification and analysis, based on the evaluations of its scouts expressed in natural language.

In the commercial sector, Sevilla FC has incorporated AI into its ticket sales, sponsorship, and Fan 360 tools, with a special focus on attendance prediction solutions, which have optimized the management of the secondary ticket market. Sevilla FC president José María del Nido Carrasco expressed his satisfaction with this recognition: “It is an honor for Sevilla FC to be the first sports entity to join the AI Alliance. We are fully committed to its principles for the safe, ethical, and collaborative development of AI. This recognition from the technology industry and academic institutions reinforces our commitment to applying technological innovation to sports and our various business areas to provide our professionals with the best tools to achieve success both on and off the field.”

By joining the AI Alliance, Sevilla FC adopts the fundamental principles of the community, which include:

  • Global collaboration to advance AI development.
  • Definition and development of AI use cases in the sports industry.
  • Promotion of open-source technology to foster equitable access to AI.

This achievement strengthens Sevilla FC’s commitment to digital transformation and positions it as a key player in the development of a more innovative, ethical, and sustainable sports ecosystem, paving the way for other sports entities to follow its example.

Recently, Meta highlighted the success of Scout Advisor in its blog, a tool based on Generative AI using Meta’s Llama 3 technology and IBM’s WatsonX, showcasing its effectiveness in the sports field.