Area: Transformation

Sevilla FC, represented by its Head of Data, Elías Zamora, made a notable appearance at the recent edition of the AI 2024 Forum, held on November 12 in Zurich. This forum, organized by the Finanz und Wirtschaft Forum, brought together economic leaders and experts in AI adoption across the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), with the aim of exploring AI applications across various industries, from entertainment to the corporate sector.

In his presentation, Elías Zamora showcased Sevilla FC’s data and artificial intelligence strategy, detailing how the club has implemented a comprehensive AI vision that spans both the sports and business domains. He highlighted the key capabilities developed through this strategy, such as the creation of innovative solutions that enhance operational efficiency and decision-making across multiple areas of the club.

One of the standout applications is Scout Advisor, an advanced platform that leverages AI to optimize the player scouting and recruitment process, developed in collaboration with IBM. This tool enables the club to analyze large volumes of unstructured data, allowing for a more precise and strategic identification of talent.

Sevilla FC was one of the highlights this Thursday at the ‘Disruptores Innovation Awards 2024’ gala, which took place at the Palacio Neptuno in Madrid. The club was nominated for one of the most prestigious awards, Best Digitalization Project in a Medium-Sized Business, thanks to the launch of the ‘Scout Advisor’ tool, which the club developed in collaboration with IBM. At the gala, organized by the media outlet El Español and its technology portal Disruptores e Innovadores, it was highlighted that this innovative tool uses generative artificial intelligence to assist in the management and extraction of information from scouts’ reports. ‘Scout Advisor’ simplifies the search and analysis of players by processing both qualitative and quantitative data, reducing the time needed to find suitable talent from hours to minutes.

Sevilla FC was nominated by the Disruptores editorial team alongside 50 other companies that have been featured in notable stories about technological innovation over the past 12 months. The article about ‘Scout Advisor’ and Sevilla FC’s commitment to technology was published on January 23rd and will now be included in print in the prestigious annual edition, The 50 Most Disruptive. This award marks another milestone and recognition of Sevilla FC’s commitment to developing its own technological tools to improve the club’s day-to-day operations across all areas, solidifying its position as an international technological leader in the football world.

Sevilla Fútbol Club has been nominated for the Disruptores Innovation Awards 2024, presented on October 10 by El Español and its technology portal, Disruptores e Innovadores. The club is competing for the award in the category of Best Digitization Project in a Medium-Sized Company due to the launch of the Scout Advisor tool, which the club developed together with IBM.

In its nomination, El Español highlights that this tool uses “generative artificial intelligence with the goal of assisting scouts in their work” and notes that it automates “the process of extracting information from various reports” and “simplifies the search and analysis of players by processing qualitative and quantitative data, reducing the time needed to find suitable talents from hours to minutes.”

Sevilla FC has been nominated by the Disruptores editorial team at El Español, along with 50 other companies that have been featured in stories about technological innovation published over the last 12 months. The article about Scout Advisor and Sevilla FC’s commitment to technology was published on January 23 and will now be edited in print in the prestigious yearbook “The Top 50 Disruptors”.

This nomination marks a new milestone and recognition of Sevilla FC’s commitment to developing its own technological tools to improve the club’s daily operations. Notably, the launch of Scout Advisor had a huge media impact worldwide, leading to the club being invited as a success story at various forums.

Sevilla Football Club, through its Innovation Center, continues to promote the dissemination of its knowledge and its educational offerings on the use of technology applied to sports. In this regard, the club received a visit at the José Ramón Cisneros Palacios Sports City from various members of the Danish Olympic Committee for a training session on how the club applies its proprietary technological tools specifically in the sporting arena.

The Vice President of the Danish Olympic Committee, Frans Hammer, highly praised the experience and also highlighted the quality of the club’s facilities: “It has been an incredible experience to come here. First of all, the sports and training facilities, and of course, also all the effort they put into innovation and the way they work with an open-minded approach, inviting external people, not as a competitor in the football industry, but more like an Olympic Committee. It inspired us a lot to take some of the things they are working on to a different level in all sports, with the combination of using special data for performance and more.”

“We are quite impressed with what we’ve heard. Sevilla FC is ahead of many other clubs. And, it seems they are also approaching new technologies, developing their own tools, but even better, they are also collaborating with startups to grow. That’s why I think we could collaborate in the future, because, yes, Scandinavia has a lot of technological potential that could also be very beneficial,” added Niels Henrik, a member of the Danish Olympic Committee’s Innovation Lab.

The delegation was accompanied by the LALIGA delegate in Nordic countries, Juan Fuentes, who highlighted the prestige that Sevilla FC enjoys in this region: “There is a view that Sevilla FC is a great club. It’s a historic club. There is no other club that has won the Europa League seven times. So it is in the minds of all European football, not just in Scandinavia.”

Sevilla FC, together with LaLiga, has implemented NFC (Near Field Communication) technology in the season tickets for the 2024/25 season. The club, which has already made the season ticket available to subscribers in digital format via a QR code, will now also have a wireless season ticket (NFC), allowing fans to enter the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán much more fluidly. Thus, by simply bringing the electronic device close to the wireless scanner located at the turnstiles, season ticket holders will be able to enter the Sevilla stadium more easily. All of this is part of a continuous improvement of the club’s services to help spectators.

NFC passes will be available on both iOS devices (the Wallet app on your iPhone or Apple Watch) and Android (the Google Wallet app on your Android phone or Smartwatch). The digital ID cards will also continue to work with the usual QR code on those electronic devices where NFC is not available. It should also be noted that the physical, NFC and QR cards will not be incompatible, highlighting that once the physical season ticket has been scanned, the digital one will no longer allow admission, and vice versa.

Season ticket holders will receive an email from [email protected] through which they will be able to download their season ticket for the 2024/25 season.

The NFC season ticket is an example of the commitment to technology that Sevilla FC has been making over the last three years to facilitate the management of the club in all areas and to continue the success achieved in previous seasons in various innovation and technology projects.

Sevilla FC has been making a firm commitment to using technology to optimize all its areas and obtain the best results both on and off the field. The Innovation Center Sevilla FC brings together all the R&D&I variants carried out by the entity. The 2023-24 season has been that of the club’s consecration as an international reference in the sports industry in terms of technology developed and applied in all areas of the club.

Undoubtedly, one of the major milestones of the 2023-24 season was the launch of the Scout Advisor tool, developed by the Data Department. This solution, built in conjunction with IBM’s WatsonX, its generative artificial intelligence system, has made it possible to optimize the availability of information from more than 200,000 scouting reports from the sports management’s own database. This qualitative leap is achieved through natural language searches, significantly reducing the time technicians used to extract all the value from the database.

The appearance of Scout Advisor has had a worldwide repercussion, which has made Sevilla FC and its commitment to technological development receive the attention of general and technological media all over the planet. This tool has accumulated prominence in more than 1200 media worldwide, with a potential audience of more than 2 billion readers. It has also been presented at conventions around the world, attending summits in the United States, India, Brazil and Saudi Arabia, among others.

Scout Advisor is just a sample of the tools that Sevilla FC has been developing over the last three years to facilitate the management of the club in all areas and is a continuation of the success achieved last season with the launch of Transfer Tracker, the first technological solution marketed by a Spanish club together with LALIGA.

We continue to break records on social media. The club’s official accounts have just reached the figure of 20 million followers across all platforms.

The numbers consolidate Sevilla as the fourth most popular club in Spain after Real Madrid, FC Barcelona and Atlético de Madrid. Furthermore we are now the 24th most followed club in Europe, having doubled our total number of followers in the last year.

Our growth on digital platforms is the result of a firm commitment to use them as a means of communication with our most loyal fans, but also to expand our fan base to all corners of the world, with a clear and defined strategy for each of them.

In recent months, the accounts that have grown the most are TikTok and Instagram, while new platforms such as Threads, WhatsApp or Twitch have also been embraced. However, at no time do we forget our closest followers with our commitment to programmes such as La Bombonera and El Partido, and new formats such as El Cubo, Triple V or El Santuario.

Meanwhile, one of the key factors in the club’s growth on social media has been the commitment to the internationalisation of the club’s brand with this type of digital platform as one of its fundamental vehicles. The number of followers outside Spain has grown by 80 per cent. 

One of the keys to expansion beyond our borders has been the generation of local content that creates a greater affinity with fans in other parts of the world. We produces content in six different languages: Spanish, English, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese and Japanese. In addition, content has been created with local agencies and influencers, as well as a wide range of content with live specials featuring players.

The visit to the United States and Mexico during pre-season in 2023 had a major impact locally and served to increase our north American fanbase thanks to various activations with our players and local fans.

Within the overall growth, some of the most notable markets are the Arabian market with an annual increase of 383 per cent. Also, the market that has grown the most is India, with an increase of 1126 per cent in a country where football is flourishing and where the club has a strategic agreement with local club FC Bengaluru United. The club also produced the ‘Never Surrender’ video series.

Likewise, in China in 2023, we were the fastest-growing European club with an increase of 83 per cent and with a well-defined strategy to reach local fans on the country’s specific social networks: Weibo, Douyin and Wechat.

Finally, in January 2024, the club launched its new Portuguese language accounts with the aim of strengthening the already existing link with Portuguese-speaking countries and, in particular, with Brazil, where the club already has a large community of supporters and high-profile ambassadors with various players from the country who became club legends.