TSG Hoffenheim and SAP Expand Co‑Innovation to Advance AI in Professional Football

TSG Hoffenheim and SAP Expand Co‑Innovation to Advance AI in Professional Football

Summary (EN)

SAP and Bundesliga club TSG Hoffenheim announced an expanded co-innovation effort to test new AI capabilities inside SAP Sports One, focusing on scouting and video analysis workflows used in professional football operations. The scouting component explores AI-supported summaries that condense large volumes of unstructured evaluation reports into shorter overviews of recurring strengths, weaknesses, and performance patterns. SAP says Joule can be used with natural-language prompts such as asking how well a player creates chances, what the most relevant observations from a year’s scouting reports are, or what a player’s main strengths and weaknesses appear to be. The stated goal is to reduce manual consolidation work and improve consistency in player assessment across youth and professional scouting. A second workstream, developed with AWS Professional Services, centers on an AI-assisted scene finder for match analysis. Instead of manually searching video, analysts describe the tactical situation they want, such as counterattacks after regaining possession that ended in a shot on target, and the system retrieves matching clips. SAP and Hoffenheim frame the capability as a way to reduce time spent on manual video review, support tactical preparation, and improve collaboration between analysts and coaching staff. The announcement presents elite sport as another vertical where practical AI value comes less from general chat functionality and more from compressing specialist workflows built on domain data, natural-language querying, and faster retrieval of relevant operational context.

Summary (ZH)

SAP 与德甲俱乐部 TSG Hoffenheim 宣布扩大双方的联合创新合作，在 SAP Sports One 中测试新一代 AI 能力，重点面向职业足球中的球探与视频分析流程。球探方向的核心是 AI 辅助摘要，它试图把大量非结构化的球员评估报告、现场观察与文字记录，压缩为更简洁的能力画像，提炼出反复出现的优势、弱点和表现倾向。SAP 表示，用户可通过 Joule 使用自然语言提问，例如询问某名球员创造机会的能力、总结 2026 年全部球探报告中的关键观察，或概括该球员的主要优缺点。其目标是减少人工整合工作量，并提升从青训到职业层面的球员评估一致性。第二条合作线与 AWS Professional Services 共同推进，聚焦比赛视频分析中的 AI-assisted scene finder。分析师无需再手动翻找大量视频，只需用自然语言描述所需场景，例如“夺回球权后的反击并最终形成射正的回合”，系统即可返回匹配片段。SAP 与 Hoffenheim 将这一能力视为提升技战术准备效率、减少手工视频检索时间、并改善分析师与教练组协作的重要工具。整则公告传达的重点是，体育行业中的 AI 价值并不主要来自通用聊天，而是来自对专业工作流的压缩与增强，即把领域数据、自然语言查询与高效检索结合到具体业务场景中。

Source

https://news.sap.com/2026/04/tsg-hoffenheim-sap-co-innovation-advance-ai-professional-football/