Simon Leaf, Partner
Head of Sports Group, Mishcon de Reya
Great, well hello everyone and a very warm and sporting welcome to Mishcon and the latest instalment in our Sports Law Academy series. I’m Simon Leaf, the Head of the Sports Group here at the firm and it’s great to see so many people here at our home in Africa House but also welcome to those of you that have joined us online remotely via Zoom. So I’m conscious that some people may be new to the Sports Law Academy, so as a, as a reminder the Sports Law Academy is a free to access academic, distance learning programme designed for lawyers, students and other industry professionals to explore the key legal and commercial issues shaping the world of sports. Our goal is to facilitate debate and share knowledge in order to improve industry standards, promote diversity and nurture future talent. And tonight we turn our attention to one of the most transformative and complex developments in the world of sports right now, the rise of artificial intelligence. From performance analytics and injury prevention to officiating and scouting and fan engagement, AI is increasingly embedded in every aspect of the industry but with these advancements comes significant legal, ethical and regulatory challenges. How do we ensure transparency and accountability in AI driven decision making? What are the implications for the, for intellectual property, data protection and athlete rights? And how should key stakeholders, including clubs, governing bodies and technology providers navigate this rapidly changing landscape? Now to help us unpack all of these issues, I’m delighted that Anne Rose, a Managing Associate in our team and a specialist in technology in sports law will be hosting the discussion this evening. Anne will introduce our fantastic panel shortly but before that I just wanted to thank you all again for being here, to let you know that after the event for those in person, we will be having drinks and some nibbles downstairs in our, in our client lounge and really just to encourage you to kind of you know really try and contribute and get as much from the session as possible, we’re really delighted to have you here and without further ado, over to Anne.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Great, thanks so much, Simon. So, as everyone said, my name is Anne and today I have the absolute pleasure of hosting this panel session which we have called Game Changer: The Rise of AI in Sport and Associated Legal Challenges. Now in the past few years we’ve seen a huge increase in the use of AI in the sport sector. We’ve seen clients use AI in everything from creating sports commentary to fan engagement, where clubs and event organisers communicate personally with fans through a chatbot and as Simon mentioned, we’re also seeing AI algorithms being used to help in injury prevention and scouting so talented players don’t escape notice. Now, data analytics is by no means new to anyone in sport so, has anyone actually watched Moneyball here? Put up your hand. Fantastic film. If you haven’t watched, please do go and watch it. It’s a great film which tells the story of Billy Beane’s sabermetric approach to selection and management of the Oakland A’s baseball team during the early 2000s and so perhaps some of the best known early uses of analytics by a sports team and now, Moneyball 2.0 is here and it’s powered by generative AI.
Now, before I crack on, I just want to get a feel of the room as to how many of you engage in this space. So does anyone here own a wearable? And if anyone does own a wearable, do you use a chat function to ask it like how you’re going to train? So, for instance, if you have an Oura ring, put up your hand if you use the Oura Advisor to actually say, “Not today. Shall I put my feet up or shall I go for a 10K run?” Is anyone that involved with it? No. Okay. Amazing. That’s really interesting.
Alright so, for the panel today, I am delighted to be joined by the star case, so I’m going to start off here with Andrew. Andrew is Legal at Hudl, a global sports technology company, it providers connected solutions for high performance video and data analysts, helping athletes and teams to train smarter so they can play better. Andrew leads the legal team responsible for global elite sports and prior to that he spent 25 years as an in-house lawyer in a telecommunications industry.
And next to Andrew, I’ve got Sol Campbell, a true footballing legend. Now from his early days at Tottenham Hotspur making a bold mark in the Premier League to his controversial and brave switch to local rivals Arsenal where he became an ‘invincible’ and Sol’s career has been nothing short of remarkable. And off the pitch, Sol’s journey has been equally compelling. So we’ve got his ventures into management to studying sports media and business at Harvard, as well as more recently becoming involved in some exciting new business ventures in the sports and AI tech space, which I’m very looking forward to talking about.
And then next to Sol, we’ve got the wonderful David and he is an advisor at Orreco and as a former performance director at FC Copenhagen and Orlando City FC and 23 years of experience leading medical performance, ooh yeah, leading medical performance and operations teams in UEFA, EPL and MLS clubs including Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool, Bolton Wanderers, Stoke City and Fulham – not many – so right, before we going to get into our panel discussion, my wonderful colleague Raj, who is sitting here, he’s going to look at what we mean when we talk about AI, the lates regulatory position and the trends we’re seeing in this space. So, thank you, Raj.
Raj Shah, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Thanks Anne. So as Anne mentioned, I am a Managing Associate in – have I just turned this off, I might have turned this off, sorry – I’m a Managing Associate in the Innovation team, I work for various AI focussed clients advising on their agreements and the application of emerging AI regulation. Now the global sports industry is, has been projected to reach a value just shy of $50 billion by 2028, with AI as a central driver behind this growth. So, I’m going to briefly cover where we are at internationally in terms of how this is all regulated and, but before that I’m just going to take a whistlestop tour through the various current uses where AI is already being deployed across the sports sector considering the related challenges and questions that have arisen. So, Simon’s actually stolen my thunder a bit because he mentioned some of the various uses AI has been, is being put to use in the sports industry and I’ve got some of them on the slide here, so I’m going to just go a bit further into detail in them and take them in turn. So, with performance analysis, AI is already being used for this, a great example of this kind of technology applied in practice are the various services offered by Hudl and since we have Andrew here, I’m going to let him talk a lot about that today rather than me but generally, coaches and players can analyse data about games, opponents and their own performances to identify strengths and weaknesses, develop strategies and make informed decisions. AI can even offer predictive analytics to suggest strategies to anticipate game play and gain an enhanced competitive advantage and this doesn’t just apply to team sports so, for example, Microsoft has recently trained an AI model on surfing mechanics and then that can be coupled with motion analysis and data about the relevant wave, the position of the surfer and the board and then that provides a general analytics designed to improve performance. And then AI technology of this kind can also help to identify bad habits that can cause injuries. We’re seeing it used to analyse biomechanical data to identify movements or techniques that could cause risk injury and so David on our panel will be able to share more insights as to how Orreco uses biomarkers and data science to generate injury indicators and recovery strategies for elite players. And then we’ve also got AI being increasingly used to improve fan engagement so, chatbots can simulate conversations and provide real time game updates and answers to specific spectator questions while predictive AI can be used to forecast a likely outcome of a game. I’m not sure why you would actually necessarily want that to happen but some people are curious. This is also another area where we have seen Microsoft get in on the action by partnering with the US’s National Basketball Association to develop a more immersive experience and this isn’t just being done by AI to simulate conversations or predict the likely outcome of a match like I just said, the scope here is much wider so, AI can even analyse various elements of a match from crowd noise to commentators’ voices to create a personalised package for viewers. And then video assisted refereeing as we know isn’t anything new but AI has been used more recently to implement more complex systems to detect critical factors used to make a referee or a judge decision so, for example, in the diving events for the most recent Olympics in Paris, AI was used to show the rotation speeds and angles that could inform judges in real time, while in the last World Cup FIFA implemented an AI powered offside detection system using a sensor at the centre of the ball which relayed its exact location at a rate of around 500 times a second. And then another major use case is talent scouting, which Andrew might be able to offer a bit more information on because Hudl offers this as one of its products and as this raises quite a few interesting questions when it comes to the intersection of AI and the law, we’ll take a closer look at those issues in a minute. One sport where this is really taking off is football and there are a few apps now that aspiring professional players can download and then use to take part in virtual trials during the recruitment process so they’re asked to perform a variety of drills that are then scored by AI and to do this, the technology rates specific measures which are key to the drill in question and then these are weighted based on the player’s age and category and then the apps can also collect individual statistical data, including biomechanics and technique to evaluate performance in real time. If the results of these drills performed during a virtual trial are as good as or better than existing players in the same age group then the players flagged as a potential rising star to the team that that’s recruiting and clubs like Chelsea and Barcelona are already using this technology, not just for talent discovery but also for potential team synergy analysis so that team’s going to be put together in a way where the players’ skills complement each other much better. So obviously, with that in mind, there’s a lot of benefits to that, some I’ve listed on the slide so it streamlines the traditional recruitment process, it frees up time to focus on deep player analyses when putting together a team and obviously it opens up a much wider candidate pool and reduces the need for extensive travel and in person evaluations. More sophisticated applications that we might see involve predicting future performance and potential, helping teams invest in rising stars as well as generate reports tailored to a team’s specific needs. But as I mentioned, with any technology, using AI for talent scouting raises quite a few interesting legal questions where the answer isn’t always clearcut.
So to start with I’m going to focus on data so, as part of the scouting process, players might be asked to submit certain fitness or biometric data or results from certain medical exams or tests. Much of this is what we in the data protection world would call ‘special category data’ which is specifically sensitive personal data. And that means the talent scouters and teams that use this special category data are going to have make sure they’ve got a lawful ground for using this data. So in this country and in the EU that will mean having to identify at least two such grounds because of the sensitivity. If the ground that’s identified to use that data is the player’s consent, what happens if that consent is withdrawn by the player in question? Can the AI model still use the data in question to train the model so that its benchmarking capabilities are up to date and as accurate as possible? Also, if the model’s algorithms infer other characteristics about the player so, for example about their general health, that also counts as special category data. In which case, what’s the lawful ground for processing that because consent usually has to be specific to a specific use case and they will have had to have consented to all those use cases. And then another challenge then that arises is one of fairness because if the underlying data of the algorithms used to train the AI reflect historical or systemic biases, then that could be an issue because if you were using for example AI to evaluate a player’s performance in a virtual trial, you’d need to ensure that the frame of reference for the tool is confined to players that got comparable characteristics so, as a crude example, it doesn’t make sense to benchmark a female athlete’s performance by reference to a data set trained for the most part on data relating to male athletes in the past, otherwise that could result in discrimination against certain athletes leading to challenges under equality laws and then that in turn leads to the question of how we ensure the AI model that’s used is transparent enough and has something which we call in the AI world, explainability and by this I mean the ability to clarify how it arrives at a particular output or decision or recommendation so, for example by explaining what factors led to one player being recommended and flagged to the scouting team as opposed to another. Now transparency and explainability isn’t easy in an AI context especially if the technology used has been licenced by someone else that doesn’t want to share their secret source as to the decision-making logic used by the algorithm but without it, that could lead to an industry wide distrust of these tools and undermine their usefulness. And then finally, another key aspect relates to the repercussions if an AI took is used to, if the AI tool basically gets things wrong so, that’s accuracy. So what happens if it makes unfavourable predictions about a player’s fit within a team or its performance analysis of their abilities is off the mark and then that leads to the player not making it through to the next round of the virtual trials or it potentially affecting their salary if they do get recruited? And then the question of who’d ultimately be responsible for that, whether it’s the AI tool provider, the competition committee or other stakeholders could then turn contentious. And then with the rise of so-called agentic AI, some have anticipated that AI powering these kind of scouting apps potentially could devise real time exercises and drills itself that candidates perform when using the app but then what happens if the AI that starts asking candidates to do these exercises it’s just devised in real time, starts asking them to do something that’s harmful to them, their, their health and if it’s specifically, if it asks them to do something that they otherwise wouldn’t have done so it pushes them beyond physical limits that they’re comfortable with but they’re going to go along with it anyway because they really want to get through to the next round. If a likely link could be established between a candidate’s altered behaviour in terms of how far they were willing to go in terms of physical exertion and what the AI tool in question asked them to do, then if something goes wrong because they pushed themselves too hard, the scenario I’ve described could fall within the scope of the EU AI Act’s provisions on what are called ‘prohibited practices’ and which have been in force for about a month now.
So, the all new AI Act so, like the L’Oreal advert where they say “this is the science bit”, I’m going to say “this is the legal bit” but the EU AI Act won’t generally apply to developing or using AI in Britain alone because it will apply to any organisation implementing AI where the output gets used in the EU or the system gets used in the EU or the users are in the EU. The Act doesn’t distinguish between different industries, instead it categorises AI systems as prohibited, high risk, limited risk and minimal risk and it also contains obligations regarding what it calls general purpose AI systems like Chat GPT that can perform various different functions that can be integrated into down stream systems. So, high risk systems under the Act include those used for recruiting individuals or evaluating them, so the scouting use case I’ve just talked about would fall within that scope and then developers and users of high risk AI systems face a raft of obligations under the Act, but the good news is there’s still two years of a transition period to go before those fully come into force. The rules on prohibited practices though are already in force and one of those relates to using AI to score individuals based on their behaviour or characteristics in a way that could lead to the individual’s unfavourable treatment or unjustified or disproportionate treatment. So, if not designed and implemented carefully, an AI scouting tool of the type I’ve just described could veer into territory that’s banned under the EU AI Act and then that could give rise to fines of up to €35 million or 7% of annual global turnover, whichever’s greater, which is no small beans.
So, unlike the EU, in the UK we’re generally favouring innovation over the regulation of AI and we don’t have any legislation equivalent yet to the EU AI Act but it’s worth mentioning that a White Paper was launched in 2023 that outlines five key principles which I am going to list on the slide. And the previous Government also preferred a non-statutory sector lets, sector led approach, when it disc, and when discussing its AI action plan the current Labour Government reaffirmed a pro-innovation approach in January of this year. The thinking behind the proposed changes is, is also what’s behind talk at the moment to change our intellectual property framework to implement a data mining exception, allowing AI training and copyright protected content unless rights holders opt out. So the consultation on this that was run by the Government closed last week and the Government’s considering its responses and that consultation hasn’t been without some high profile criticism you might have seen in the news, especially those voiced by those in creative industries, so watch this space on that.
So although our Government sees AI as being critical to driving growth, it doesn’t mean that AI is free entirely from regulation in the UK because there are existing legislative frameworks and powers that are going to be used and, in some cases, refined to address the risks so, for example I mentioned data protection earlier. Elsewhere in the world we have the US so, there isn’t any consensus on a Federal level on AI regulation in the US but it does have an AI blueprint which, like our White Paper, sets out non-binding guiding principles for industry led implementation. We’re also starting to see state level regulation on certain particular issues such as deepfakes and then China’s regulatory framework not only focusses on traditional AI safety measures such as transparency but also incorporates elements that are unique to China so, adherence to socialist values and prohibiting that anything that could generate incitement against the State. And that curiously, the provisions regarding deepfakes require service providers not only to adhere to mainstream value orientation but also actively disseminate positive energy. So, with this global regulatory framework then, managing all this can obviously become quite a compliance headache so that burden is one of the challenges that’s posed by the rise of AI which some others, which will no doubt be discussed by our panel in a moment, include cost, trust, user adoption and basically the availability of data needed for AI to be as accurate and as reliable as possible. As a shameless plug though, we do have a great set of resources to help thinking about those challenges and that’s on the AI Resources hub on our website which you can go to now by scanning the QR code, but don’t worry if you don’t have a chance to now because we’re going to share this repeatedly throughout the evening but it’s kept up to date with the latest AI developments so do check that out. And with that I’ll pass back to Anne. Thank you.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Thank you, Raj. Right so, before we kick off discussions, very excitingly we are going to get a demo of the products, which is very exciting.
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
Thank you for the invite and I hope I can share some of my experiences as a Performance Director on the buy side of technology and where I’m helping Orreco at the moment understand the sell side of the technology. I’ve got a rich experience of sitting on the forefront of the innovation curve where in Bolton Wanderers back in 2002, Sam Allardyce built an amazing sport science led, player centred technology team which we repeated in Fulham and which I then brought to FC Copenhagen where we had a great success in the UEFA competitions and then finally to a new frontier over in Orlando. Orreco is a company based in Gallway in Ireland, ten years in the making, they’re at the forefront of AI. They started off as a bioanalysis company of basically measuring how the body is responding to work so, taking blood from your finger and measuring what the internal response to work is so, if you remember people where GPS units and that tells us the quantity of the work that they did and now Orreco developed bioanalysis of a single drop of blood which tells you the cost of doing that work. Now, the huge access to computer power and with the new AWS or Google models where you can now process tens of billions of lines of data has now given Orreco a chance to be at the forefront of AI led innovation because we have the data, we have the telemetry but we just didn’t know how to ask questions of it. So, if you imagine a Formula 1 car going around a lap there’s tens and tens of billions of lines of data, while in a game of football that data already exists in the TV feed or the blood in the finger but we just didn’t know how to ask the right question of it. So, Orreco now is pivoting a little be away from biomarkers into the Gen AI, big compute machine learning model. So we have a little video here.
(Video playing)
Dr Brian Moor, Co-Founder and CEO
Orreco
Hi, I’m Brian, one of the humans at Orreco.ai. The challenges of elite sport have never been greater. More games, more travel, more minutes. At Orreco we’re surfing the three waves of AI, advancement in computing power, Cloud storage and generative AI to help the best athletes on the planet optimise their recovery and prolong their careers. We’re thrilled to introduce you to Athlete 2.0. The first Gen AI app for elite athletes that gives personalised and evidence-based suggestions to help maximise performance. You can talk to your own data. “Hey Orreco, give me an overview of last night’s game.” “Yeh, it was intense but a really good win. Pull up my wellness log.” “I feel a bit sore. Can you log a 6.” “What did my high speed distance look like from my last six games?” “Now add my information.” “Okay, that makes sense.” “Can you give me some tips to recover from last night’s game based on my data.” “What does my travel look like next week?” “Great, thanks, gotta bank some sleep so, how is my sleep data looking?” “Who am I matching up with tomorrow night?" “Okay Eric, we meet again.” “Can you show me the latest scouting report for him?” “Game on. Let’s go.” Athlete 2.0 will be available to our clients this upcoming NBA season. We are tuning our models for athletes competing in the EPL Champions League WNBA, WSL, MLS, Liga MX, Saudi Pro League and the NFL. If you’re an elite athlete or you work with one and would like to join the list, please feel free to contact us humans at Orreco.ai. Let the AI games begin.
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
So, there’s a few, there’s a few humans left, there’s 18 PhDs, there’s 18 PhDs on staff and these guys have built these amazing models, got access to mega computes. The spots legacy technology already exists from the TV cameras, the stat sports, Oura, all of the different devices now so if you third party integrate that now into the app, the Athlete app, now the athlete has his own performance director in his pocket, or her pocket, and now they can talk to their data and all the data exists, the streams are there, it’s about just bringing it together now in one, in one place and the fascinating thing here now is does the athlete own this data and will the athlete be able to commercialise that data one day? Well now at least we know it’s sitting in one place and they can have explicit opt in and opt out of how the AI model will basically interpret this data that is available. The key really for the player is can I be more available so my career longevity is there using the data that in the last twenty years of all these innovation curves that all the work we’ve done before in the past, now the athlete has access to that and they can start quizzing the data so, really it empowers the athlete to be you know in control of how they interact with the AI model. Now, this should really put me out of a job because now everybody has a performance director in their pocket but what we believe it’s going to do is free up the human to have more engaging conversations with the athlete and the AI model will create staff efficiency where they can focus on more important things, so we expect headcounts in departments to stay consistent and not reduce but the expert can now focus in on you know really important human interactions in the game and the player now has full visibility and transparency of where everything is. In the past it was very difficult to show them all the different data streams that we had on them and now with the Athlete app once they, once we port everything into it, they can see everything that happens internally in their body and externally that’s monitored so, it’s a real breakthrough so, this is what Orreco is doing at the moment.
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
Okay, so our mission at Hudl is to make every moment count. Our purpose is to give every athlete the shot they deserve. But let’s see what our customers say about this.
(Video playing)
Uriah Djedje
Norwich City Academy Player
Hi, welcome to Norwich City Academy, I’m Uriah Djedje and today you’ll be watching the day in the life of us players.
George Buckley, Lead Academy Performance Analyst
Norwich City FC
Hi, I’m George Buckley, Lead Academy Performance Analyst here at Norwich City, Category One Academy and we’re excited to show you round.
Here at Norwich City Football Club we have one of the smallest academy analysis teams in the Category One tier system but we work incredibly efficiently through our use of technology.
Uriah Djedje
Norwich City Academy Player
So first part of the day, game plan meeting for Saturday’s game. Let’s go.
George Buckley, Lead Academy Performance Analyst
Norwich City FC
So we’ve come in here to do the player game plan meeting. We split players into groups for each phase of the game. We’ve got a build team here, we’ve got a high press team over here and we would use Hudl.com to almost feed that information right through and they can collect different instances from that footage, share that out across players and coaches. So one of the core aims of the player game plan meeting is to develop clever, intelligent players that can adapt in the moment.
Uriah Djedje
Norwich City Academy Player
Just heading to the change room, gonna put my boots on and head out to training.
George Buckley, Lead Academy Performance Analyst
Norwich City FC
So, here at the training ground we have three different types of coverage solutions. We have the IP camera, we have drone cameras and then we also have Hudl Focus Flex. The Hudl Focus Flex enables us to move the camera around depending on where the session is going to be, it’s also instantaneous on review, as soon as you hit that record button it’s uploaded straight up to Hudl.com and Hudl Sportscode also allows to ingest that into the multiangle capture where we can simultaneously look at drone footage, IP camera footage and also Hudl Flex.
Uriah Djedje
Norwich City Academy Player
So, just come back from training. It’s already been uploaded to Hudl and now I’m just watching myself back to see what’s done well, see what I can improve on. Going to head to the gym in a couple of minutes.
George Buckley, Lead Academy Performance Analyst
Norwich City FC
So using Hudl Sportscode we can live code and capture automatically and that can sink straight into our timeline. Players all have technical and tactical IDPs or Individual Development Plans, so we predominantly focus on clipping those live moments that link with their individual development clips. We can monitor what type of drill the coaches are running and also access those clips, rewind any particular instances that we might see and anything that relates to the game plan meeting we can also clip them out as well so we’ve got that ready rather than having to wait, we can almost tackle that straight away.
Uriah Djedje
Norwich City Academy Player
Time for the best part of the day, lunch, I’m going to grab some food, after some food I’m going to review today’s session on the big screen.
Now I’m moving onto game unit reviews where we look at positives and areas of development from our last game. Let’s head in.
George Buckley, Lead Academy Performance Analyst
Norwich City FC
To end the day we have unit review meetings where clips are chosen and discussed in their respective units.
Uriah Djedje
Norwich City Academy Player
So hopefully you’ve had an insight of how player development here works through analysis. Thanks for watching. Cheers.
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
So, I’m pleased to say that Uriah just recently got a three year contract at Norwich City Academy, well at Norwich City he was involved with the First team in pre-season and he’s a very intelligent player with a bright future. So, Hudl, what is Hudl? Well Hudl is a vertical market SaaS company, it’s powering the most important workflows in sport. So we hold a unique position because we’ve built a platform that is used across the entire sports ecosystem for every key person or in a sports organisation, we’re in over 40 sports at every level of play from elite professional teams all the way down to youth sports. Our four key pillars are performance, recruitment, operations and fan engagement. So part of our magic is bringing video and data together. We capture every moment that matters with our fleet of automated cameras – you saw that on the video just then – and wearable devices. So our cameras run algorithms that automatically follow the action on a field, a pitch or a court without the need for a camera operator. The content is automatically uploaded to our platform, the little, the little blue triangle you see here is WIMU, that’s our wearable device. We produce data and analytics on many, many games per year with a combination of an in-house analyst team and AI and each time we tag a game we save hours of customers’ time and our investment in AI allows us to do this at best of class efficiency and accuracy.
So our performance tools, this is the first key pillar. They make it easy for coaches and analysts to find the key moments quickly and then use those actionable insights to develop game plans and coach their athletes. So, recruitment is the second pillar, so we provide recruiting subscriptions to colleges and professional organisations so they can find and recruit the best players for their teams without having to visit them all in person. So that’s Wyscout. So Wyscout is one of the leading recruitment platforms in world football. It’s used by teams in the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga and all the other major competitions around the globe. Perhaps some things that you won’t have heard of previously, operations is the other pillar. So coaches, parents, administrators, they don’t want to move from app to app to coordinate schedules, communicate with the team, register their athletes, so we’re enhancing our platform to simplify this process into one app and to add tools that make it easier for clubs to manage their revenue, their facility schedules and know where and how they can grow their club. One of the key fastest growing markets in sports tech is fan engagement and I think this is an area where I, AI can really have a big impact. Revenue comes from fan subscriptions and advertising whilst providing value to sports organisations through revenue share and tools allowing them to more effectively connect with their communities.
So, Hudl is giving every athlete the shot they deserve, helping coaches and analysts find the key moments, assisting teams to manage operations and connecting sports organisations and athletes with their fans. That’s Hudl. Thank you.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Thank you. Brilliant so, I just kind of want to start off as well so you mentioned as well like the, the Athlete app and you know how that might be changing as well as the role of an athlete from my perspective as well, like I, I love my Oura ring and I know many people didn’t put up their hand for the, for wearing wearable but I’ll ask it as well like, do you think I should run 10K today? It’ll be like no, put your feet up. I’m ah, amazing. That’s sounds so great. But from your perspective, Sol, how would you feel for instance as a player if you were told do you know what, you cannot play in the Champions League Final today because actually all this data is saying you’re going to have an injury and you could be knocked out for a good six months.
Sol Campbell
Maybe I’m from a different era. Not too far back but I think I’ve come from a different kind of time and coaching and I’m a street footballer so, a lot of the guys now these days probably not from the streets but when I was, you know, seventies and eighties and maybe a little bit of nineties there was a lot of street football going on in the UK, it’s kind of diminished now, still happens abroad, Africa and places, or parts of Europe, so it’s still, it is still happening but I feel for me there is great strides in technology to help players and managers understand their bodies, their players and things like that and that’s good and I think there is amazing kind of you know pushes but then there, there’s a balance between you know I’m playing a Champions League Final and the computer says no, it’s like, you don’t want that do you really. I think it’s all about balance. It’s all about balance, you can’t have too much technology, you can’t have, you know, and just disregard the human eye, the experienced coach, the experienced scout, that’s where it or, or the fitness guy who’s, or woman, who’s you know helping that particular team or the individual so, it’s all about balance. I, you know sometimes, human beings are great you know, they can defy a lot of stuff so if you keep on listening to the, to the computer says no, you can actually miss out on some amazing things going forward in your life because you just listen to the computer so, it’s about balance.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
David, do you feel that actually this is quite evasive having their blood taken?
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
At the start people were worried about the computer says no and maybe some of this data will be used against me in a contract negotiation or maybe I won’t be selected on Saturday based on data and there was, in the early innovation curve from 2000 to 2010/20, of adoption of so much surveillance. Football players, athletes, are probably the most surveilled employees in the world and they would not have trust of the, the user of the data, the protector, the data controller and it broke the bond between the head coach and the player. There is now somebody in the middle with data and the bias of the data so there was huge learnings between building trust as a department, as a technology provider, as a head coach and as everybody started to become data literate and started to trust the data, what we then found is that it gave an athlete a chance to you know stretch passed what they felt was possible, like Sol says. The data never said you can’t play in the Champions League Final, it says that you know it’s shown us that you can play in the Champions League Final, now go out and show us what you can do, so it helped us create trust in big moments where the data could motivate the athlete so, but that early period was quite difficult and now when the athlete puts his finger out, or her finger out to take the blood, it’s basically part of the flow, the dynamic of the day, takes 30 seconds and then usually it’s a green light to go so, the head coach gets a little report within 30 minutes and then when he knows he goes out onto the grass, he has 23 players to go and maybe there’s one player that has an amber warning and that player might be looked after in certain parts of the session so it, it mitigates risk, better decisions are made based on the internal pinprick of a blood, a measurement that takes…
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
With the amber player though, would they talk to the player first and let them know?
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
Yeah, the amber, the amber player now believes and trust in the data, that if they’re modified, they believe that this is the right thing, an expert. Now an AI hasn’t made this decision, it’s an expert that builds a personal relationship, so the human touch is still there and when it’s red, they, they thank you for it because they say I’ve obviously not recovered today and it would not be a great idea for me to take part in a full session so thank you for signalling a red, which is basically just hold back this player for 12 hours of extra recovery, so this has been a fantastic way, especially during Covid time, to base, if somebody was sick you could pull them based on having this data point. In the past, it would have been very, nearly impossible to pull a player thinking that he may be ill or she may be getting ill but now we could use the data points to say we’re going to take this player out, the squad will not get sick and we can continue with the 23 players that are ready to go, so that change really has helped all players be available more.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, I know, my ring will tell me I’m ill before I even know it, I’m like ah right well better put my feet up right now. It’s just crazy, it’s amazing the data it looks at. I mean, just Sol as well, you mentioned about coaches too and the, the role and how that can, how AI can really help coaches and you’re actually creating a project as well at the moment whereby you know looking at AI and how that might actually be able to, to help coaches.
Sol Campbell
I think, you know, I developed it a little bit here at Mishcon de Reya, you’ve been, you’ve got a small tech team inside so that was good for me. For me, it’s all about being an assistant really going forward. When you look at the data, when you look at the amount of players out there and coaches, you need, it doesn’t balance, you’re not going to get the proper coaching that you, that you need and sometimes you’ve got I don’t know say 30 players, you’ve got maybe three coaches and then the manager’s obviously busy trying to get ready for, for the game or the next game and you’ve got maybe two coaches trying to help you know take three keepers out and you’ve got like you know mid-twenties and it’s all about you’re not going to get the quality of coaching that’s going to push you forward. Usually the contract will say four, five, six players and the rest are kind of just, just kind of making up the numbers but you never know the, one or two of those players can actually blossom and grow but it, if you’re kind of in the mix and you’re just worrying about next game, next game, next game, how are those coach, how are those players are going to actually realise their potential? It’s never going to happen and it’s happening around the world so, I’m developing this, this is not for, for a UK because you know there’s, there’s so many analysts and it’s great and you still have the kind of black spots with, with that lack of training, this is for, for India, this is for America, this is for you know Africa, the Caribbean where they need that kind of coaching, where they need that sophisticated coaching but also worrying about their body, worrying about if they’re in the right position and things like that, the fitness, this is what I’m creating now, that’s more you know you guys are already set and it’s all, it’s perfect in, in Europe but places like you know Africa and poor parts of Europe and in America the opposite way really because they’ve got the money but they haven’t got the coaches so it’s different and I’m looking at India as well so, to find out how best to kind of put this together and make you know almost a virtual coach. It’s almost like I want to kind of split myself into a million pieces and like help individual players, that’s what I want to do and then I’m kind of building towards that. There’s a lot of, a lot of companies looking at this and I’ve just got to choose the one, right one, I was in a, in a company in Switzerland but I’ve spun out of that and, and now I’m looking to kind of put this technology or software somewhere else, mobile software.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Amazing, amazing. And Andrew, how do you feel as well? AI is changing the role of, of coaches as well.
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
Yeah, I think in performance analysis and coaches probably four things I would say. David touched on it earlier. Efficiency so, it’s giving time back to coaches to do what they should be doing, coaching. It’s also, in terms of the existing data, giving more actionable insights, deeper insights into that data. It can flag alerts for you and it can spot patterns that otherwise the human eye wouldn’t be able to spot. I think also it can create new data so, I’ll give you an example of defending in football so, there is data that you can see so for example a tackle or an interception but there’s data that you actually can’t see, like top, top defenders like Sol, they will, they will even if they don’t tackle or intercept, they can have a brilliant game and no goals are scored and that’s all about thinking about what their defensive impact is about other things like their positioning, it’s their body positioning, their speed, where they are on the field. Now AI, you can’t see that the human eye, AI will be able to create your, what’s called your defensive contribution in order to sort of look at the other side to that, stopping actually before you need to make a tackle so, so that’s, that’s another area. And then I think the other one would be about better…
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Just sorry, just to stop you on that.
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
Yeah sure.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Interesting. Would you see us getting to a point now in a game where a player could almost be buzzed to say you know what, you’re, you’re, where your strategy, your play of how you’re doing everything is fantastic, keep going, and actually interrupts the game almost?
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
No, I can’t see that, no, I don’t think so because, I mean at half time maybe, yes, but not, not during a game. I think the other area is predictive analysis, so predictive models, I mean you see that you know in Formula 1 now in terms of the predictions of where you should pitstop to you know that’s already there, I think that will come more into other sports as well so.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
So interesting, yeah, it’s really, really, it’s fascinating. I mean and in terms of like how you’re finding your approach from an AI governance perspective as head of Legal, you know, what do you feel like one of the biggest questions you’re getting from some of your customers and things like that?
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
Yeah, I mean in terms of AI I’d say that you know we’ve had an AI policy for a long time now and the legal team looks at any sort of vendor contract that’s going to involve AI but what we’re also doing is developing a governance framework, an AI governance framework and what that will do is have an AI board, it will involve the key stakeholders in the, in the company, including legal and engineering and it will put compliance at the heart of building out AI technology.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
So AI by design.
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
AI by design. So you’re building the compliance into the design and the lifestyle cycle of the AI. And then every time something comes up you, you will flag it as to low, medium, high risk and that will give you the ability to discuss that and decide you know is that a form that you want to pursue because you, you’ve got to make sure that you know ethical considerations as well to it and, and so there are many things that we’ve heard that we talked about earlier so that we have to look at so that, that’s the kind of the way that we will approach it going forward as this, as AI evolves.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
So interesting. And David, do you agree with that?
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
Yeah because we’ve at Orreco also done the same where the player at the centre and the explicit consent of opting in or opting out of deleting or porting your data, everything is done with that as the core tenant, the core principle that this is the player’s internal and external data signature and how can they have ownership of that as they move around their sport ecosystem but really interestingly at FIFA Pro, they want to be able to monetise the future data rights of the previous period of athlete data, no matter where it’s stored and they’re working with some big data companies, Mark Gorski and FIFA Pro have signed an agreement that we will try and monetise these data signatures, which is fascinating because players don’t know it’s an asset class until somebody creates the first asset class and that someone is interested in buying it and maybe some of the, the TV companies or the, the gambling companies might be first but Orreco now has decided that how do we create the explicit opt in/opt out function and put that central to all the product features that are being developed because maybe it was hard back in the day to ask a player “do you consent to being recorded in the game via Genius or Hudl” because a player just assumed or presumed that they were going to be recorded and now there is actually a data signal that follows every movement. One of the big advancements in Second Spectrum Genius Sports that follow the games is that there will be from the VAR technology, a thousand points 50 times a second of how the player moves, so now you can actually get motion signal and you can watch how the player moves and maybe if an ACL or a hamstring risk is there, the, the technology exists, the data exists but a human or a computer may say player x has to come off because he, his or her motion signal is so you know stretched away from normal that I think there is potential for an ACL or a highspeed hamstring injury. Now that’s protecting the investment of the player, the data exists but maybe a player doesn’t opt in to being taken off the bench or taken off, off the field in a Champions League game, so those are really fascinating conversations.
Sol Campbell
Or maybe they want to be taken off, you’ll never know. If they’re having a bad game.
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
Yeah, usually, yeah. So they’re fascinating things that we’re going to see but this ex, opt in/opt out and being explicit consent is very important for Orreco.
Sol Campbell
I think with the data scenario is you know you, it’s the players first, I think as long as you put the players first and they are, they have all the options open now and in the future, that’s what it’s all about and if, and if FIFA Pro want to kind of monetise in the future, there should be, have a situation that they should be compensated for that, you know, because you know that is your IP, that’s who you are, that’s your, that’s your, you’re building something for them so there should be some type of you know situation organised by the powers that be to, to kind of give money back or remuneration or whatever just not, just not oh let’s collect it together, let’s make some loads of money and let’s give it to some gambling platforms and then you’ve got players who are thinking well that, they’ve used that and they’ve you know I’ve got nothing out of it. That’s where I think the problem starts really.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Well it’s interesting as well so this is like the big question is that there’s this massified as well the content creators and generative AI and the service providers and who owns what and how people are being compensated. Would you like you know, about to say something David?
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
Yeah, but we think a lot about it but the, the likeness of the player and the actual player running around and who created the data, like a, like a rights holder, an officially licensed rights holder produced the data so it’s not really the property of the player anymore, belongs to the rights holder and how that’s used later and how that’s licensed, that’s all fascinating and that’s where I think…
Sol Campbell
I think that’s where the big problem’s going to come in when you’ve got some big players and they say do you know what, we’re going to the courts here, we’re going to the European Union and we’re going to fight for this because future wise, you know you’re not, I understand like Sky and obviously the Premier League they own all the rights and you know I try to go, I’m, I’m negotiating with them with some podcast stuff and you know I’m thinking to myself core I want 20, 20+ year old stuff and I still have to pay for it and I, you know, I’m thinking how does that work, they still want money for you know 20+ years of footage of, of certain players and it’s just, it’s just kind of who owns it, are you getting compensated for it and so everyone feels like yeah, we’re benefitting, not just one side.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Mm, what’s your thoughts, Andrew?
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
Yeah, I mean, I’m you know pro player, it’s about giving, as I said earlier about giving every athlete the shot that they deserve, I mean it’s all about improving what the player does and can do to give them you know a brighter future, get sign new contracts, get recruited, scouted, but yeah no, they’re fascinating topics in terms of you know the ownership of data and the rights holders and the licensing and yeah.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
I mean, what do you consider the future of AI in sports tech to look at? We’ve looked at like a lot of the trends and things that we’re seeing at the moment but where do you actually see the future like ten years’ time? I’d love to see what all of you think about that. David, do you want to start?
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
So, I believe that every player will benefit from having a performance director in their pocket and if the player’s career longevity and…
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Even individuals just without, just the athletes and players, do you think next time round we do this talk everyone will put their hand up and they’ll all have like a, a wearable that they’ll be using?
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
That’s it at the elite level the players will benefit from that but also as younger players are developing now, digitally native and they will be able to you know get coached by Sol, they’ll have access to their Wyscout or Hudl, motion signal will now be able to identify a young girl who might get an ACL at 14 and give personal coaching. So now everybody will have access to all of these different knowledge bases and the LLM, as long as you put in really good knowledge and it’s not biased then it should be able to not hallucinate then it shouldn’t be able to hallucinate back a bad answer for this young girl who is at risk for an ACL at 14 and so, I think AI will create this immense efficiency and access to knowledge that other knowledge workers have made and then I think there will, there will be a, a huge appetite for that level of support for everybody so it almost democratises knowledge from the elite level all the way down so, I think that’s the first big win. The second big win is that there’s so much data there, now efficiently we’ll be able to you know ask questions of it and see really if there’s richness in the data because everybody talks about actionable insights but it’s actually really difficult to do an actionable insight so now it’s about can you find richness that is actionable so I think that’s what will happen, that’s the second big win.
Sol Campbell
I think you know what I’m trying to develop now, which I am developing now, is I think in the future there will be access, everyone will have access to high level, top quality 360 coaching wherever you are in the world because if you look at India and places like that, they, they don’t know what they’ve got in their country. I spent five weeks there you know with the World Cup and one of their major satellite or TV shows but they don’t know, they don’t know, Goa who they’ve got, Delhi you know Kolkata which is quite good at, they love football, they don’t know, so to be able to have that kind of assistance and quality and moving you all the way through your journey, helping you every step of the way, watching your games and then replaying them, helping you, in the consciousness of the player to kind of put them in the right position, predictive. That’s what it’s all about and to have access around the world, you know because there’s not enough coaches, it’s impossible and there’s a lot of people who want to play football, not only top athletes or budding athletes but you know maybe there’s a lot of people who are just semi-pro or just having fun and just want to be really good at you know football. That’s what I see you know in the future, almost like mini kind of coaches around the world, using their phones, yeah, using their phones, helping out, you know, have a journey, you know, data going backwards and forwards, having a Playbook, looking back at it, years, a Playbook, all that kind of stuff, digital Playbooks, that’s what it’s all about.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Mm, love that. Andrew?
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
Yeah, I, I think that, I think David touched on this as well but what happens at the elite level is going to trickle down through club and into youth as well as you make those advancements. And so you’re going to see AI at different levels of different sports. I think that fan engagement is one where it’s really going to take off so, for example, I can see the world and maybe not that far away where you have streaming of I’d say a university game in the US and you having that streamed to the parents of the players who are playing that game but then you can, AI can create like a broadcast professional video style delivery to you, so for example the AI can sort of say well this is the score and so it knows what the score is, it can give you a rundown of what’s happened in a post-match report, it can even then take the highlights of your son or daughter’s best moments in that game and play them back to you.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
That’s wonderful.
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
So I think that, that’s maybe a, an area that we’ll see develop in the future.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Amazing and it just, well like you as well have recently, what was the business, Balltime, as well.
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
Balltime, yeah.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, do you want to talk a little bit about that as well.
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
Yeah so, Balltime is a, a volleyball company fuelled by AI, we just recently acquired it in the last few weeks, and it uses AI specifically in, in the volleyball area and I think it’ll look at things for example like, and this comes back to the injury prevention, in volleyball in practice if you are, it’s how high you’re jumping, how many times, things like that and if, if it, if the AI has a model that can say okay well in a practice you should have only jumped this high and this many times, that’s the average and if you’ve gone way over that there’s a question of whether you’re overexerting yourself and there’s an injury risk so, you know AI will come in in areas like that so.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Do you think, do you think there are any sports where it doesn’t work?
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
In traditional sports and in America, the National Hockey League which as decided that its innovation curve is not a hockey stick, it will be, it will be very slow, traditionalists have decided to step back from mass integration of data as the players and their traditional ways slowly built trust. So there is a demand from ownership and a demand from performance experts and demand from sports tech companies but building the traditional, you know building the bridges with the traditional players and traditional coaches, that’s very, very important so some people will have a slower adoption curve, while if you remember INEOS, Ben Ainslie’s boat, they, if you saw the cyclors, they put cyclists inside the hull to create the hydraulic pressure to lift the boat, so that’s like the most amazing innovation because they, they know that if you’re doing this you’re going to get fatigued when you have these big leg muscles, so they didn’t get cyclists in there, they got rowers in there and the upskilled them to produce 1500 watts of, of, of power so they could raise the boat up. So that innovation curve is, that’s literally, that’s, that’s NASA level, SpaceX level. So we have different adoption requirements in different sports depending on what the competitive advantage is and some will be just a little bit slower. Whoever goes first will, will win, will be first, so like whoever goes first will be first, so I do believe owners and general managers will always be looking for a competitive advantage in going first on AI technology so, I’m a firm believer that there will be a first and there will be a class of firsts.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
I love that. Right, I, I could literally could talk for ages but we need to open it up to the audience so, if you have a question please do raise your hand and then please do wait before asking your question so someone can come around with these wonderful looking microphones to be able to record the questions so everyone who is watching on, online can actually see it. Okay, so Tom first. I only did that by the way because I know his name.
Tom
Thanks guys. We talked a lot about providing athletes with access to data and how that can be really beneficial for them but I think this is kind of premised on the basis that sport is kind of an exact science, a lot of the time sport is based on emotion and belief so, I want to give you a scenario and see whether you think it would be good to provide an athlete with access to this data or not. So, given we’ve spoken so much about the Champions League Final, it’s not an event that’s as important as the Champions League but let’s say it’s the day before the Champions League Final, a load of players go to sleep, they’re quite nervous, they wake up, they check their sleep score and it says you only slept for five hours last night and your sleep score is fair, 68, do you think, do you think it’s beneficial for the player to have access to that data or do you think actually in certain instances it might be better to withhold that data from the, from the athlete because that could then, they could then go into that matching thinking I haven’t slept very well, I’m not going to play well and that could, and then it can spiral from there so, in what instances do you think it’s right to withhold access to data from athletes?
Sol Campbell
Me?
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Who wants to take that one?
Sol Campbell
I think, I think when you look at that, lack of sleep, I mean you’ve just got to look at the individual player really. You know, you can’t, as I said it’s all about balance, if you haven’t got balance, also by then you’d put as a manager and coaches, you should know your players by then, it’s not like you know you’ve just met them and sort of like you’ve got the Champions League Final, hopefully you’re kind of sensitive enough to understand that that particular player and the way they kind of move, the way they think, the, what are they like in the mornings and all that kind of stuff, games, you, I think you just collect that and you know make a, you know a proper, balanced decision and you know had five hours and got to you know, instead of playing I’m going to put you on the bench for the final so, I think it’s all about balance and knowing your player.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Could also be five great quality hours, you know, or you know depending on your circadian rhythm and when you went to bed and things that it could be completely different, so it’s interesting.
Sol Campbell
I just think it’s all about balance and you’ve got to, you’ve got to know your player. I think that’s the, that’s the main thing for me.
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
I’d totally agree, it can’t, it can’t, AI can’t tell you the mentality of the player, you know, does he need, well you know whether he needs five hours sleep or eight but, but you know, you know then how resilient he is, you know him as a person, he or she as a person so.
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
So, I can be a devil’s advocate so, sometimes we get data that shows that the player should not be selected the night before and that, often from a blood review or from an MRI qualitative and you look at the MRI and there might be a split in tendon and while the player is “I’m a bit stiff here” and we haven’t fully disclosed that there’s a split in the tendon and then we look at the MRI and we have to sit down the player and say look, your tendon will probably fail during the first half of the game. When you get cold at half time and you go back out, you probably are going to be dealing with a catastrophic grade 2 or 3 tendon tear or a rupture so, it’s the World Cup Final or it’s the Champions League Final, it’s not my job to tell you that you can’t play so you have all the information, now what would you like to do? The player will often say look it’s a Champions League Final and I need to play, it’s the biggest game of my life and you can’t take this away from me, and we say yeah, that’s fine and then we have to sit down with the, with the head coach and the sports director and explain the risks and one of the big risks is that the head coach has to change his team fifteen minutes into the game and that changes everything and then usually the head coach takes a team based decision instead of individual decision based on some qualitative data from a MRI, are you sure this is going to fail? Well yes because it, there is a split in his tendon, he won’t make it through the full game and so, okay, and then the player has to then make a team based decision, it’s not fair for me to continue with my shirt and I also agree that I won’t be my best because I didn’t sleep last night because I’m thinking about this pain I have here. So I’ve been in two of these situations before where that data created a difficult conversation that the team and the player had to discuss and I’ve been a consultant twice where a team made a decision to play the player because he was the captain and he’d played in grand finals and he never made it through the two, the two games and they lost both finals and that was just, he decided “I would put my body on the line for the team” and he never had the great game, so that was, that was, that was a tough decision for the player that’s ultimately, you know, the decision he made.
Sol Campbell
I get that, you know, if it’s an injury and it could kind of you know take a season out, I totally get that, but you know for me I remember one of my games it was against Blackburn away when I was playing for Arsenal, I, you know I was completely on you death door, completely ill, I was like you know but I had to go and I think mentality, you know I didn’t train for 24 hours, on the plane up there, hood down, didn’t speak to any of the players and I just remember that going out you know at Ewood Park on the floor with Pat Rice saying you know I’m on the floor thinking I don’t know how I’m going to bloody get through this game and I’m just like gone, but once the game starts you kind of get through it and you know we won 2-1 at the end, I got through it but I think it just comes down to the mentality of the player, I got through that, I was like thinking I can’t get through this game but I found a way and that’s what you know, I totally understand when it comes to injury because you could you know take yourself out of the season, you could be out for even longer, you never know but illness and things like that, I think it comes down to the player if they really want it.
Audience member
Hi there. Really interesting subject. Have you started to see, have you baselined it so you were talking about I think Norwich, so have you seen an improvement in performances, lack of injuries, you know are you actually measuring and quantifying this and able to report back and share some of those with us?
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
One, one example about baselining in Orreco is that there’s certain periods of time when you take a blood analysis where everybody is healthy and everybody should have a normal baseline so, there are periods when the body is extremely stressed and that’s 36 hours after a game to 48 hours after a game. By taking all those readings in non-stressed and stressed environments you get a huge amount of data that creates these baselines and then you make better decisions around what the data tells you and it makes suggestions based on how you deviate from what’s normal.
Audience member
Sorry, I mean the season before you started, did you baseline it and then you’ve gone what do got 20% less injuries now.
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
Yeah, so, this is, the UEFA study, you can a UEFA study where everything opts in and opts out to whether they’re going to share all of their injury data and when we made some big changes personally in one of my last clubs, we went to a 98% availability for the year, up from 84% and 100% availability in training and that was all based on the head coach interacting with the data, we just measured it and we presented it and then a human had to make a decision about this player trains or not but based on the head coach’s interaction with the new information and this is where I like to talk about the Formula 1 car going around every corner, we have all the data in football but we just don’t listen to it yet, while the Formula 1 they listen to every single part of the data during that journey so, all we have to do is make that data more visible, make the invisible visible and integrate with it more and make humans make better decisions but the return on investment for an owner of having a 100% availability is like phenomenal, every owner should be saying I, I don’t want any time burden injuries any more, if you tell me there’s some technology that exists and you can reduce lost time, sunk cost of wages, this is like, you know, this is the holy grail for ownership groups now.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
I mean that’s an interesting one though, like talking about the costs, you know benefit analysis because actually I mean you know the amount that you’re talking about in terms of the level of technology that’s involved, doing MRI scans and everything, it’s not cheap so actually like balancing the two and it’s quite a tricky decision.
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
I think accepting the fact that you might lose a star player for nine months and the cost to the fan engagement, the marketing campaigns, social media production for all young fans, if the star player is not there, ticket sales, sponsorship, commercial, let alone performance. If you can keep your talent and your star you know marketing good on the pitch, whatever that costs, it’s usually paid for by just one week’s salary of a proper star player. So, you know, ownership really probably are quite confused when performance guys say oh player X is out for nine months again and they kind of just accept the sunk cost of losing that, that investment and the ROI gets drastically changed and I say if it’s a restaurant you would close your restaurant down if 90% of your lobster goes in the bin.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
But then on your example though earlier with the, where the captain lost in the game but he still played, overall commercially was it probably better in the sense that you know all the fans are excited because the captain’s there, is more involved, you know the commercially were they doing better?
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
I don’t know, everybody likes to have their captain on the pitch, Sol, don’t they, everybody, everybody wants him to set, him or her to set the tone.
Sol Campbell
I mean it’s all about you know, yes, it’s great to have the star players, your captain, you know the fans are going to feel we’ve got a chance to win, yeah we’ve got a chance to win the game but if you’ve got technology that can give you a balance, I mean not just for one game, I think it’s balance over the course of a season, that’s, that’s what it’s all about, you know to have a view and have an extra pair of eyes or digital eyes on, on that player or players over the course of a season to keep them healthy.
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
I think the cost, the cost element that David just talked about as well comes in, in with recruitment so, obviously it’s a lot of money in football but not all the clubs have that, right, so they can use data because, because a coach would like maybe wants to buy a player that he knows, who he’s played with previously, he knows the mentality of that player but using the data, especially the clubs that don’t have a lot of money, can use that data to unearth the golden nuggets and the data will tell them it’s a bit like, like the Moneyball example you came up with about finding the talent that isn’t that obvious, okay, but is going to fit in with your style of play and then that’s going to help you recruit the right players and not spend money that is then wasted but it does come back to balance because you know if, if the sporting director or the coach, the analyst, they all agree that the player is the right one and you take all those inputs and make the decision then you’re probably going to end up with a good player.
Sol Campbell
I think with Fenway when they first rocked up, they took a lot of baseball stuff and then they went into Liverpool. The trouble is they took Moneyball literally, they, and it’s two different sports and I get baseball and it worked in baseball but they took the same kind of concept into football and I think it was only Henderson that actually worked out in the end, I mean everyone else they had didn’t work out, and now they went back, they’ve gone back to kind of having that technology but also a good pair of eyes of good scouting, so it’s all about balance but when they first rocked up, they went strictly kind of Moneyball, baseball style and they, it was only Henderson really at the end that worked out for Liverpool.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Interesting, Andrew how did you finding people are reacting to Wyscout?
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
Yeah, I mean Wyscout’s a well-known product in, if you’re in elite football, you know it gets mentioned and after Champions League games and players are talking about, so yeah, you know it’s, it’s, I think if you go back not that long when you would had to have had scouts around the world to go and see players, now you can use these tools to get to a shortlist very quickly and then watch the video and get that shortlist even further down and then maybe you then send a scout to go and look at those players. So it’s going to save you the cost of having, and it’s efficiency, yeah, that’s what it comes down to.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
So interesting, oh, lots of questions, fantastic. Ooh, go.
Audience member
We’ve talked about pre-emptive management of injuries and all that sort of thing. Under the Wilder code, clubs, federations, teams are not allowed to do pre-emptive drug testing so how do you balance understand a player’s fitness through a blood test against a Wilder rule of being prohibited from doing pre-emptive testing so your player tests clean when the dope testers turn up next week?
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
I believe that when blood panels are taken internally inside a club and what you’re screening for, you know maybe the answer to that question because I don’t know of any club that does a let’s say a secret drug test on any player. Yeah.
Audience member
So what you’re talking about.
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
Yeah, yeah so, I think that comes down to maybe even the hypocritic oaths of like you know doing no harm and honesty with your player and testing for…
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
What we’re also talking about special category data and some of the legal bases that you can rely on, we talked about you know explicit consent but there’s also you know for elite, for an assessment for a medical diagnosis for instance so, there’d be other thing.
Sol Campbell
I think with the drug testing, random drug testing, obviously when I was kind of playing there were, there were some chairmen and owners, they were trying to catch people out if they wanted to get them off their wage and that was quite prominent when I was around, certain you know chairmen and owners were and that’s you know that happened, I think now it’s a little bit more ladies and gentleman kind of you give the owner a little of heads up now, bit more, more relaxed and…
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
Yeah but I think when you’re, when you click on the box what you’re screening for from a blood test, the consent you’re getting from the athlete is this is a normal blood panel and I’m just checking your iron levels. When you start looking for something else, you’d have to tick that box.
Audience member
What I’ve done now, certainly been looking at, I don’t know if it’s actually in practice, is rather than having a blood test, a syringe out of your arm, now they’re just simply doing what you’re suggesting is taking a, a pinprick and through that they can detect illegal substances.
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
Also, when WADA come into your facility to, the doctor has to be present, there’s strict, strict guidelines, the player has to consent to the urine or blood test so, when you’re testing for like out of, out of competition substances, you’re explicitly testing for that, you’re not measuring for iron or for calcium imbalance or whatever. So players, that process is very well governed and I don’t think any employer has ever done a, none I’ve worked for, has ever done a sneaky drug test of any, any type.
Sol Campbell
I think it still happens.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Right, I think we’ve time for one more question.
Audience member
The point made earlier about the difference I think you said between 84% and 98% when, when you started to look at and listen to the data, have we got to a point now where managers are obligated as part of their employment contracts to, to listen to the data and to optimise to that level and, and as a build on that question, is that also coming into manager and coach selection their ability to understand and process and interpret data in order to prove, improve performance?
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
I believe so, in the selection and the recruitment of managers, there will be often like a data literacy section, how much will you trust and listen to the data? How much do you like to use recruitment data that is based on numbers? And then obviously human side and coaching style. I think the in the future we may even say how AI literate are you? Are you willing to have an AI assistant advising you on the data? And as the, as the key man or key person of an organisation, that question may be expanded into will you listen and engage to the data? And as we move away from the traditional coaches to more data literate coaches, everybody’s got a digital, digital native now, everybody uses the Hudl suite of products, every head coach has a report automatically sent to him, half time the head coach gets an analyst with the key moments on video with data points and the attacking plan from the day is based against what happened in the first half so every head coach is now like data literate, it would be very rare to be a traditional head coach who says I just want to listen to what my stomach is saying and what my eyes are telling me.
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
And you, and you see that now, it’s sort of been in, in English football where you’ve got quite a large prevalence of managers from Germany coming and they believe very much in the data and they use a lot of that, I mean I support a team that’s got a German manager, I see him using it all the time so, yeah.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Are you a little bit like, “That’s my product!”? Sol, do you have any views on that as well?
Sol Campbell
No, I just think it, you know, it’s all about, you know I keep on going back to balance but there is, there is a, there is a obviously the future is, is there and it’s going to get bigger and it’s going to you know impact football and all sorts of sports, it’s, it’s how much it impacts and how far, how deep it goes and yeah, I still think there are still managers out there who, who are from the old school kind of era but understand it, you know it’s not only just new coaches and you know fresh ideas who are kind of au fait with all that, I think there’s some really top managers who appreciate that and understand there is a balance between technology and having the quality of years of experience and in the end when it gets really tough in the games, you, you, you kind of almost need less AI and more a friend, more a father figure you know helping those players. Some, you know, need a kick up the rear end, others need a you know arm round the shoulder, you know AI can’t do that, that’s what you’ve got to be you know totally honest with that, you know AI’s not going to help you in those kind of you know something could be happening off the field you know at home or whatever, anything, AI;s not going to help with that. The manager and the players around are going to help you with those kind of scenarios, I think it’s just an assistant assisting you know the player to kind of you know get the best out but there’s certain things that are not going to help, so it’s all about balance.
David Cosgrave, Advisor
Orreco
Yeah, the death of AI could be on a false positive if AI is giving too many false positives, too many lies and the trust is lost between the human and the data, that could be the death of AI because there’s nothing worse than the false positive and taking this to a decision maker and if that happens, if AI gets integrated too quickly and people start relying on its data then that’s the, that’s the end of AI for many…
Sol Campbell
And, and also I think bias as well, being you know you want to have, there’s different kind of situations with say Caucasian or a black player or Indian player, you’ve got to kind of understand there’s you know the, the make up is slightly different in different ways so you’ve got to be conscious of that, that it is unbiased and it’s just kind of helping everyone, not just kind of singling out oh we’re just going to help this demographic, that’s, that’s really you know the big push at the moment, they’ve got to make sure that is open to everybody.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, and try and get that data, to get enough of that to be train, yeah, fascinating.
Andrew Kitchen, Senior Director
Legal
It’s there, it’s there to assist, it’s there to help the player, help the coach, but you know give you the data and then it’s up to you what you do with it and, and empower you and to make you better but it’s like the trust, you’ve got to believe in it, so.
Anne Rose, Managing Associate
Mishcon de Reya
Yeah. I absolutely love that, what a fantastic panel. Can everyone please put their hands together for this panel.