Soccer Intelligence: TSG Hoffenheim and SAP

TSG Hoffenheim is working closely with SAP as part of a co-innovation initiative to test new AI features within SAP Sports One.

The focus here is on how artificial intelligence can effectively support key areas in soccer, such as scouting and video analysis. Scouting plays a key role for TSG Hoffenheim. At the same time, this area is one of the most data-intensive tasks in professional soccer. Player evaluations often consist of numerous individual observations, detailed reports, and assessments that ultimately need to be synthesized into a clear overall picture.

SAP Sports One and Joule

SAP Sports One is currently experimenting with AI-powered scouting summaries. Initial prototypes demonstrate how SAP Joule can be used to ask questions in natural language and receive AI-generated answers. These help quickly distill long, unstructured texts down to the essentials—for example, by highlighting a player’s recurring strengths, weaknesses, or playing tendencies. The team is currently evaluating how much these features can reduce the manual effort involved in analysis while also ensuring greater comparability and consistency in player evaluations. The goal is to enable better and more informed decisions in both youth and professional scouting. TSG Hoffenheim is actively contributing its experience from daily scouting work to ensure that the solution is tailored to the real-world demands of modern scouting challenges.

„We bring our practical experience from the
Everyday soccer life and combine them with the
SAP Expertise in the Field of Enterprise AI
”and cloud-based sports technologies."

Timo Gross,
Head of Football Intelligence,
TSG Hoffenheim

AI Instead of Video Analysis

Video analysis also remains one of the most time- and resource-intensive processes in professional soccer. Together with SAP and AWS Professional Services, TSG Hoffenheim is currently working on an AI-powered concept for searching match footage and is testing it in practice. The idea behind the AI-assisted Scene Finder is to enable analysts to find relevant game scenes more easily and quickly by describing what they’re looking for in natural language. Instead of laboriously clicking through long video recordings, they can, for example, ask: „Show counterattacks after winning the ball that resulted in a shot on goal.“ The system delivers matching sequences within a few seconds.

Intelligent Scouting

With intelligent scouting, insights from natural language processing, and automated video search, soccer analysis is evolving rapidly. AI will continue to play an increasingly important role in professional sports. SAP and TSG Hoffenheim are expanding their partnership with the goal of improving performance, streamlining processes, and unlocking new strategic advantages. (Source: TSG Hoffenheim)