The world of football also uses the advantages of data analysis

Data holds the key to a wealth of information. SciSports knows better than anyone what this knowledge can do. Football clubs and organisations worldwide call on the company from Enschede to help them make the right decisions.

We all know that football often involves millions. Therefore, having the right player in the right place is very important. Not just for the game results; it is essential for performing optimally and making the club (the company) profitable.

Attracting the right players used to be a combination of knowing the sport and having experienced scouts on the sidelines. For years now, everything from shot power to the number of shots on goal and the running lines has been measured on the fields, giving decision-makers additional information to consider when making a purchase.

SciSports goes a lot further. According to Marketing Manager Jelle Leenders, the working method of the University of Twente spin-off even allows hidden gems to be tracked down who statistically ‘surface’ from the collected (digital) information. “By helping professionals gain insights and analysing and interpreting the data, we can do much more than the human eye. Data can really add something. We do trend analyses, for example, by taking a close look at a player's matches. That data is kept, sometimes as far back as ten years ago. You can imagine that this information can help a professional make a better prediction for the future. Standing on the sidelines only shows you the performance of that moment, and you cannot observe everything happening simultaneously."

Football is a complex sport. There are 22 players on the field who do different things every second in a match. "We, therefore, work with complex models and algorithms that also allow us to visualise the performance of individual players from the team's perspective. All to optimise the performance.”

But data is not ‘sacred’, even for SciSports. According to Jelle, they are an addition to other ways of gathering information, such as video images and 'regular' scouting.

The company, founded in 2013 by Giels Brouwer, employs around thirty people. “And we are still growing”, says Jelle. “We continue to develop. We are now in the process of offering our services even more widely within the professional world, which means getting more players, teams and matches into our database. A natural and logical development given the growth of data in football”, he says.

More than a hundred professionals around the world work with SciSports, including the KNVB, FC Twente and Ajax. Other examples are Leeds United and clubs and agencies in Mexico, Japan and Portugal. "We are active in about twenty countries and develop our own software with our product team", says Jelle. "'Science meets sports', in other words, hence our name."