GAME ON Reading believes AI could help close the gap with bigger clubs
access to data is much less likely to provide a competitive advantage for organisations. At Reading, AI could therefore represent an opportunity to close some of the gap between football clubs with enormous resources and those operating with considerably tighter budgets. “We still need to get out of the division,” Fenton says. “We feel like AI could be an equaliser.” Beyond the algorithm Whether that ambition ultimately leads to promotion remains to be seen. Football, after all, has a habit of ignoring even the most convincing data. A perfect model cannot account for every bad decision, unexpected injury, moment of individual brilliance or ball that simply refuses to go in. But that may be precisely why Reading’s approach is worth watching. The club isn’t presenting AI as a magic solution to the problems of modern football. Instead, it is attempting to make the technology part of the organisation itself – from recruitment and analysis to communications, education and fan engagement. While Reading FC may not have the budget of the Premier League’s biggest names, that could ultimately be the point. If AI can help a League One club operate more efficiently, its value as a sporting technology will be rather more convincing than any typical AI demo. » We still need to get out of the division. We feel like AI could be an equaliser «
But Fenton is equally clear about what AI should not become. “It’s about how we augment people,” he argues. “Not how we replace people.” That philosophy runs throughout Reading’s programme. Since arriving at the club, Fenton has delivered AI education sessions across all departments. Grounds staff, office workers, executives and players have all been involved. “Our groundsmen have been in and done it as well,” he says. “From every level of the club, top to bottom, we’re educating them about what AI is.” Introducing AI into a football club evidently isn’t simply a matter of buying a new platform or signing a partnership with a technology company. It requires people to understand what the technology is capable of, where it can be useful and, equally importantly, where it isn’t. The great equaliser Technology adoption in sport has historically been uneven. Data analytics took years to gain acceptance in football despite transforming baseball and basketball long before. Even today, many clubs struggle to bridge the gap between technical specialists and football practitioners. “You don’t want the AI to talk about the AI,” Fenton says. “You want the human talking about its capabilities and possibilities.” Fenton explains that the future of football is unlikely to be fully automated. The clubs that gain an advantage won’t necessarily be those with the most sophisticated algorithms, but those that successfully combine technology with human expertise. “Data isn’t the advantage any more. It’s how you use and analyse the data,” he says. That distinction could become important as sophisticated technology gets more accessible. Tracking systems, video analysis and performance metrics are no longer exclusive to the very richest clubs. As those tools become cheaper and easier to deploy, simply having
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