AI could work in real-time and change the way team owners manage their teams and recruit their athletes.
AI Could Be New Game Changer in Sports Management
Major sports teams in Europe and the US embrace the idea that AI could change their management and create successful strategies for picking out their athletes for the games.
Liverpool hired an astrophysicist and theoretical physicist to research game management. In 2020, Manchester City also started working with Google to crowdsource AI strategies and hired an AI scientist and astrophysicist, Laurie Shaw, who taught at Harvard and designed trading systems.
Other major league teams from the NFL to the NBA, to baseball and soccer, are also testing AI’s capabilities.
Zone7’s Intelligence System Can Forecast Players Injuries
Zone7 was founded in 2017 and is one of the oldest AI firms focusing on gathering data on physical performance. It has partnered with the military healthcare providers, even looking into managing fatigue and burnout in people from areas unrelated to the sports industry.
Zone7 has worked with Major League Soccer (MLS) ‘s team Real Salt Lake and managed injuries data for another undisclosed Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise. It is also working with dozens of European and US clubs such as Scotlands’ Rangers, Serie A’s Bologna, and Getafe of Spain’s La Liga.
Capital investor and owner of a digital sports media consultancy company, Albachiara, Roger Mitchell, said that AI could acquire incredible insights, primarily on injuries, game tactics, and recruitment.
He also said that team owners want to minimize possible risks. He also stated that it’s not financially reliable to say something like: “this guy will be OK,” and he would rather have the data. Mitchell has invested in Zone7. With the help of AI, Zone7 can analyze data and predict if there is a risk for the player to be injured.
Co-founder and CEO of Zone7 Tal Brown said that AI is not a “magical black box that knows everything,” but it can predict accurately. It can place an athlete in the red zone, which means that he or she is at a high risk of injury or decline in performance in the next few days without proper intervention.
How Does It Work?
Derived from complex mathematically-crunched information, Zone7’s AI finds patterns and correlations of the player’s well-being. It can spot things that the person didn’t even notice.
It computes millions of calculations of data points to find risk indicators that doctors or athletes can miss. Its abilities are almost limitless. It uses the medical history and statistics of the physical capabilities of the player. Using data trackers and information from other athletes could make the AI even more accurate.