CASE STUDYIntel® Xeon® Processor E3-1285 v3 Product FamilyBig Data AnalysisEntertainment/Media

Scout7 Changing the Game

Scout7 helps 138 clubs in 30 football leagues around the world organize and access data to allowthem to do what they do best – focus on the football. In an environment increasingly reliant onvideo content and big data analytics, Scout7's platform uses Intel® technology to deliver the com-puting power and video transcoding speed that clubs need to mine and analyze more than 3 millionminutes of footage per year, and holds 135,000 active player records.

Challenges• Decision-making pressure. Football clubs need to make strategic decisions that can impact

business performance as well as match success.

• New data expectations. Much data is available for objective decision-making thanks to theprevalence of video and the ability to easily access and search big data through the cloud.

• Need for speed. Clubs want to evaluate an opponent’s performance as soon as possible afterone match and before the next.

Solutions • Vast database. Scout7’s football database contains 135,000 active player records.

• Video transcoding. Using Intel® Quick Sync Video, Scout7 can transcode footage of each new matchin 30 to 45 minutes, making it available to clubs for analysis just two hours after the final whistle.

• Advanced graphics and analytics. Scout7 offers advanced big data cloud analytics capabilities,with graphic capabilities powered by Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1285 v3 product family-basedservers, and Intel® HD Graphics P4700 built into the chip.

Impact • Player performance. Clubs and players can analyze past performance and how it relates to

training schedules and match preparation. This insight can inform future decisions about whoto put on the pitch.

• Big events. Clubs can manage the long-term evolution of their player roster by planning forfuture transfer windows and all recruitment activity 6-12 months in advance.

• Future goals. As data volume and computing power continue to grow, the platform has potentialfor use pitchside, in the commentator’s box, and in other sports.

A game of the heart and the headDespite the heartfelt passion and excitement that many feel when watching a football match,behind the scenes it’s a numbers game. The elements that make up the perfect 90 minutes – theright players in their best positions, the strategy and tactics employed by the manager, the skillsthe coach focuses on in training – are all determined by careful and in-depth analysis of statistics.How often does the opponent’s winger take on the full-back? Where is the other team most likelyto have a weakness in today’s lineup? Which players can make an immediate impact from the subsbench, and at which point? These, and a host of other decisions, are made based on insight gatheredfrom previous team and player performance. In a business as big as football, it’s essential thatthese decisions make sense.

Traditionally, even right up to the end of the twentieth century, the insight behind these decisionswas gathered by teams of scouts. Come rain or shine, they would attend and monitor hundredsof matches, writing up and posting their reports to the chief scout, who would file them carefullyaway in the office filing cabinet. Stats would then be obtained from hard sources such as matchday programs and annual yearbooks, which were only updated once at the end of each seasonand only included basic information such as appearances and goals. It wasn't the most efficientor thorough process.

Football scouts and analysts take decision-making to the next level with big data, Scout7 and Intel® technology

“Football isn’t just a game; it’sbig business. It’s therefore

increasingly looking towardsbig data analytics to facilitatedecision-making. Our platform,powered by Intel® technology,

is enabling clubs to meettheir business, as well as their

on-field, goals.”

Lee Jamison,Managing Director,

Scout7

In the early 2000s, Scout7 began to change thingswith an online ColdFusion* database architec-ture into which users entered worldwide matchlineup information that would then automati-cally update player and match statistics. Scout7’steam of researchers, based all over the world,managed and maintained the input of match,player and transfer information on a daily basis.Within months, a massive live online footballdatabase was born. Scout7 used this to popu-late data into individually tailored private ap-plications for clubs to manage their scoutingdata from anywhere in the world.

Today, football is big business. And as a busi-ness, it’s becoming more and more reliant ondata. For starters, there is biographical data –where a player has previously played, who hehas played under and when, goals, and total

minutes played. Then there is match data in-cluding all shots, passes, headers, tackles,take-ons, goals, and assists.

From scouting, recruitment and player develop-ment through to strategy and squad selection,hard data is supplementing scouts’ subjectiveexperience to give clubs the best chance ofmaking the right decisions, both on and off thefield. A lot of this data increasingly comes inunstructured formats, especially video.

With access to more sophisticated cloud storagesolutions and video-sharing facilities, clubs nowhave as many as 100 new games available onvideo every day. They’re no longer reliant onwhat they saw on TV or in the favorable footagea player’s agent chooses to share with them.There’s footage now of every shot, from everyangle. As a result, it’s not uncommon for clubsto utilize scouts as they would any other em-ployee, getting them to evaluate players andteams from nine to five at a desk, to supplementthe live games they watch in the stadium.

“Our customers are embracing this transition todata-driven business decision-making, breakingaway from blind faith in the hunches of individ-uals and pulling insights from the raft of newinformation sources, including video, to extractvalue and insights from big data,” explains LeeJamison, managing director and founder, Scout7.“They are increasingly employing specialists indata analytics to inform scouting, recruitment,training, and player development activities. Andas the volume and complexity of the data grows,they need increasingly sophisticated solutions.As a result, we’ve been doing a lot of work in-corporating capabilities around video transcodingand data analytics into our offering.”

The detail behind the drama Following the explosion in video content, Scout7now processes more than 3 million minutes offootage each year. Besides being full of mo-ments of tension, elation and heartbreak, thisfootage holds thousands of little details thatget clubs’ scouts and analysts very excited – upto 2,000 individual actions (such as passes,goals, and corner kicks) per match, which aresupplied by industry-leading event-data spe-cialists. Scout7 uses Intel Xeon processor E3-1285 v3 product family-based servers andIntel Quick Sync Video to transcode the newfootage, enabling it to process match recordingsin 30 to 45 minutes and create a frameworkwithin which to mine insights from clubs’ growingdatasets. Within two hours, it can have the videoready for analysis by integrating match eventdata provided by the third party event-dataspecialists.

Scouts and analysts at a club can then accessthe platform through the cloud to analyze thisdata and extract the specific information theyneed. Footage can be stored as full games ormade into playlists that have been edited byanalysts in-house. This enables scouts to reviewa player’s key match events which can be fil-tered using an exhaustive list of key criteria suchas completed passes or assists. By running dataanalytics supported by powerful graphic capa-bilities delivered by the Intel Xeon processorE3-1285 v3 product family with built-in Intel® HDGraphics 4700, Scout7 provides a fast, sophis-ticated system that clubs can use to enhanceits scouting and analysis operations.

The importance of being able to access this con-tent as quickly as possible in a time-critical en-vironment is highlighted by those instanceswhen teams have to play back-to-back games

“Technology has made adifference in the way footballis played and managed. The

huge volume of video footageand other data available nowmeans clubs have the tools to

make more informed deci-sions than ever before.”

Bradford Griffiths,Operations Director,

Scout7

Fast Facts • 104,000 full game video recordings are

currently stored in the Scout7 database,with around 3,000 new matches addedeach month.

• 277,427 player records have been createdsince 2001, with an estimated 135,000 ofthese players currently playing in eliteprofessional football.

• Between 1,600 and 2,000 individual actions(e.g., shots on target, completed passes,tackles, goals) are captured from everygame, supplied by third parties.

• 138 clubs around the world use Scout7technologies to assist with the manage-ment of their scouting operation.

during the season and as a consequence, onlyhave a short period of time to analyse newfootage of their upcoming opponents. For ex-ample in the English Football League Champi-onship, the average team has to play one-quarterof all its league games during midweek, just 72hours after a game on a Saturday.

One Championship club currently using Scout7’stechnology to support its match preparation isNorwich City. The club’s head of performanceanalysis, Donald Barron, explains how the clubis using the company’s latest platform, the In-telligent Sports Framework* (ISF*), alongsideVideoHub*, an advanced video analysis solu-tion developed jointly by Scout7 and OptaPro,to help ensure the club is fully prepared forevery first-team game it plays throughout theseason. “At Norwich City we have a number ofscouts and two match analysts, who work onproviding information to the manager and coach-ing staff on the opposition,” explains Barron.“One of our analysts is always able to work agame in advance, so their preparation startsaround two weeks prior to a game. This is thecase when we have one game per week, butduring the more hectic periods their preparationwill start a week before the fixture. We will alsohave scouts watching the opposition live inthe stadium a number of times before we playthem, so their work will begin a number ofweeks before we play each team.”

The turnaround time for scouting reports andcollating them into an overall assessment ofthe opposition, with video footage and data, isvital when Norwich City plays on a Saturdayand then again on a Tuesday night. Managersand coaches need to have a detailed assessmentof the most recent match as soon as possible.This means completing the scouting reportand accessing footage of the match within afew hours of the game finishing to ensure staffhave all the relevant information they needand can watch the game back for themselvesthe same night or the next morning.

“The Scout7 system has a number of majoradvantages that help support our requirements,”says Barron. “We can create standard reporttemplates for our scouts, so that the managerand coaching staff consistently receive thespecific information they need each week. Wecan also securely store all of our reports onlineand access them easily through individual log-in details with varying levels of access. We haveaccess to HD footage of all of our opponentswithin a couple of hours of their matches finish-ing, so that all users can access online or down-load to view offline.”

He continues: “VideoHub allows us to identifyvery specific trends in a team’s play by carryingout bespoke searches across a vast numberof matches on the database. This tool has hada major impact on the quality of our work andthe productivity of the department, as we canidentify very specific details on a team’s patternof play within seconds. Previously, it would havetaken a number of hours or even days to getthe same level of detail during our preparation.”

As well as preparing for midweek matches, pro-fessional clubs in England have to plan for otherbusy periods during the year, notably over Christ-mas and Easter. During these periods, the Scout7technology has an important supporting roleto play in ensuring a club’s preparations arenot compromised, a point stressed by Barron.“During the Christmas period, we can play threegames in five days, with only 48 hours betweenmatches and we also play two matches within48 hours at Easter. This puts huge pressure on

everyone involved. Our scouts and match an-alysts all want to maintain the high standardof work they provide every week, so the Scout7system and all of its tools provide valuablesupport in making this possible, even in themost intense periods of the season.”

Tracking player performance So how exactly can a club translate all this datainto value? One example is by applying predic-tive analytics. This is an established conceptin corporate decision-making, where the antic-ipation of future trends is a lucrative practice.The same principles are now being exploredin sport to maximize teams’ chances of winningchampionships.

“We have already seen some early applicationsof predictive analytics in football,” says Jamison.“For example, instances of player injury can beanalyzed in conjunction with data about train-ing regimes and game frequency to determinethe likelihood of future injury. Individual clubscan also collect data about each player’s coach-ing, fitness and exercise history over his careerwith the club to create an audit trail that canhelp establish a correlation between perform-ance in training and on match day.” This insightcan then be used to develop optimal trainingand nutrition programs to manage the risk tofitness, especially if players are under additionalstrain when club and national competitionscoincide.

Now, as technological innovation advances,the wealth of career-spanning player data isincreasing—and with it, clubs’ ability to improvefuture scouting processes. By building up a bankof data covering player milestones all throughtheir journeys from youth leagues to the firstsquad, patterns can be established and used asbenchmarks against future stars’ development.

For example, FC Barcelona’s Ivan Rakitic firstappeared in the Scout7 database as long ago as2003, when he made his debut for the Switzer-land national under-16 team. His progressthrough the Swiss national youth ranks is char-tered, before he switched allegiance to Croatia.His first senior club appearance is recorded,made in 2005 for FC Basel 1893 as a 17-year-old, as well as his first full 90 minutes, firstsenior goal and subsequently his first majorcareer migration in 2007, when he was trans-ferred to FC Schalke 04 in Germany.

Preparing for transfers Now in its fourth season as an English PremierLeague club, Welsh team Swansea City hassuccessfully established itself as an efficientoperator in the player transfer market, bothdomestically and internationally. It has built ascouting operation that includes the head oftechnical player scouting and the Europeanhead scout, who work closely with the club’shead of recruitment, David Leadbeater and chair-man, Huw Jenkins. The scouting departmenthas been responsible for recruiting playersfrom several countries including Spain, France,the Netherlands, Mexico and Italy, as well asplayers recruited domestically from otherPremier League and Football League clubs.

The club also employs 10 scouts who monitorall senior football in the UK, four scouts oper-ating regionally in Europe and two office-basedtechnical scouts, who analyze player targetsusing a combination of video and detailed sta-tistics to compliment the traditional methodolo-gies adopted by the scouts who attend games.

For around 10 years the club has used Scout7technology to assist with the management ofits private recruitment data. Like Norwich City,it now uses the Intelligent Sports Framework(ISF) and VideoHub. Head of technical playerscouting Tim Henderson explains how thistechnology has assisted the club’s long-termplanning as it prepares for each transfer win-dow: “Planning is always ongoing,” he says. “Alot of it is based on the contractual situationof the players at the club and how long eachplayer has remaining on their contract, andobviously always being mindful of looking toimprove the team throughout. But I would saythat on average you are always looking at leastsix months ahead. The Scout7 systems we haveare critical and it would not be an exaggerationto say that we all live by them every day, access-ing them from first thing in the morning to lastthing at night.

“All scouts use the system for submitting theirreports," Henderson said. "Between them, theywill get out to at least 30 different games aweek and compile assessments on playersbeing monitored.”

According to Henderson, the technology hasplayed a significant role in changing how allclubs monitor and identify prospects in eachkey recruitment market segment. It enablesthem to be more proactive in defining whichplayers meet their specific requirements andwho can then be monitored on a weekly basisin the build-up to transfer windows.

“In days gone by, an agent would have sent youa DVD of all of his player’s best clips, makinghim look a world-beater,” says Henderson. “Butnow, as we have access to all this footage andthe tools for analysis, we have the means tomake a rounded evaluation of a player. Thedata we receive from Scout7 and OptaPro helpsus set up and define an effective filteringprocess. Depending on the positions we arelooking at and the criteria we have set, we canlook at all the different stats and footage tobuild a full picture of a player.

“We may have 10 criteria that we are looking atand if a player ticks most boxes we can, if it’sappropriate, take our analysis to the next stageby sending our European head scout or one ofour senior scouts out to look at the player andcompile an eyeball assessment in the stadium.

“We will continue monitoring their performanceweek-to-week, both on video and through ourscouts, and if the reports we get back continueto be positive, I will arrange to watch the playerlive myself alongside our head of recruitment.

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Then, if everyone is in agreement that we wantto recommend a player, I will prepare a full Pow-erPoint* presentation, incorporating all theresearch and data we have compiled, to presentto the manager, chairman and the board.”

Intelligent recruitment In North America, Toronto FC is about to embarkon its ninth season in Major League Soccer(MLS) and, as one of three Canadian franchisesin the league, it has strict rules to adhere towhen assembling its player roster. At the startof the year, the franchise had the opportunityto pick five players in the first two rounds ofthe annual MLS Superdraft. To assist the clubahead of the draft, it used an advanced searchtool within Scout7’s Intelligent Sports Frame-work to statistically analyze nearly 5,000 playersinvolved in domestic college soccer during thepreceding year, to narrow down a list of feasi-ble targets that warranted further attention.

Besides domestic soccer, it also used otherareas of the platform to assist with the execu-tion of its plans across other recruitment strands,as Jack Dodd, director of scouting operationsexplains: “As is the case with clubs in Europe,we don’t have the freedom to recruit players whoare contracted to other clubs anytime we like.We can only recruit during two trade windowsscheduled every year. We are also only allowed30 players on our roster, with strict salary rulesand a set number of places for internationalplayers, so our recruitment operations need tobe run intelligently in tandem with our playerbudget and squad management.”

Dodd and his team uses the Scout7 platformto archive any reports created about a givenplayer and incorporate them into the club’sspecific assessment criteria. The team can alsointerrogate this archive of reports in order tofind out how many players that it has watchedhave been given a specific ranting or rank, based

on a specific attribute in a report. Scouts canretrieve a definitive list within seconds usingthe system’s search engine.

“We also archive any other relevant documen-tation on a player, whether that be news arti-cles or other information, and save it to theirrecord. Over time, this enables us to compilehuge dossiers of intelligence to support ourdecision-making,” says Dodd.

As is the case at Swansea, the Toronto systemalso enables the club’s recruitment staff to pres-ent their work to the board, highlighting theprocesses being followed and the reasons foridentifying players deemed appropriate to theclub’s needs. “Our department manages ourown player shortlists on the ISF for each differ-ent recruitment strand, which can be accessedby all our scouts, coaches and football opera-tions staff,” explains Dodd. “In terms of cor-porate governance, this is really valuable, as allthe stakeholders in recruitment decisions canlog into the platform and establish which play-ers we are giving serious consideration to.”

The records are maintained on a daily basis, soif the scouts and managers need to discuss any-thing they can arrange meetings, either in per-son or remotely, with the platform open to gothrough all the information available on theplayers. This ensures that all decisions and stepstaken are sanity-checked internally at everystage of the player identification process, whichhelps the club make sound decisions with re-gards to the players it chooses to approach.

Goals for the future "As the volume of data at a club’s fingertips andcomputing power continue to grow, the rolethis information plays in a club’s workflows andpractices is also growing,” Bradford Griffiths,Scout7 operations director, explains. “We expectto see increasing demand for real-time matchdata to assist in in-game decisions, as well asmore advanced analysis to support player-baseddecisions such as training and transfers.

There is great potential outside of football too.The database, video, and analytic infrastructurethat Scout7 has developed can be applied to

other sports – team or individual – to supportrecruitment, training, strategic and tactical de-cisions. With new technological innovations,Scout7 expects to see an array of immersiveand visual analysis environments develop, withthe ability to control certain information orparameters. “Compared to today’s largely ob-server-based models, we expect that improvedprocessing power and analysis models will fa-cilitate the analysis of unstructured or previouslyuncorrelated data in the same environment,identifying new trends and patterns that canbe used to leverage more value from the data.”says Griffiths.

Advances in video technology and data insightswill go hand in hand. Scout7 anticipates a timewhen vast amounts of data can be automati-cally extracted from video, and correlated witha scout’s subjective information of the sameevents. These can be combined to form a moreholistic dataset for interrogation in an immer-sive environment. Speaking of video, “We’vealso been working with a major UK broadcaster,whose football commentators use our platformfor pre-match research,” Griffiths continues.“When you hear them talking about a player’sstats, team shape or potential strategies beingused, they’ve probably gleaned that informa-tion from Scout7. One thing that we may seein the future is that Scout7's platform becomesa tool for match analysis on TV as well.”

Griffiths concludes: “There is huge potential forextracting more value from existing match data.We will start to see more predictive and prob-ability analysis - how alternative team and playerstrategies could potentially influence the out-come of a match. There are many variables onthe pitch so it will never be an exact science,but as the data grows and new trends materi-alize, we can certainly use the data better, wejust need to ensure we are asking the rightquestions.”

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Football clubs make critical strategic decisionsabout players, matches, and transfers usingIntel® technology