UK Edition
Artificial intelligence tool can unearth bargain rugby players
A British artificial intelligence firm is looking to revolutionise the world of sports transfers by designing software that picks out bargain rugby players.
ASI Data Science has signed a deal with London Irish, the rugby union club, to help it find undiscovered gems by using cutting edge data analysis techniques.
While rugby scouting typically requires looking through hours of footage to assess a player’s ability, the software allows a club to enter the name of a star player and will assess match statistics to find players with similar styles.
It looks through around 100 different parameters taken from Opta, the sports data company, which covers every professional player on the planet, to find players similar to the star that a club would buy if money were no object.
The machine learning software clusters different types of players together, making it easier for scouts and analysts to find players and removing the biases that many believe cloud judgements when signing players.
Marc Warner, ASI’s chief executive, described the tool as another level in sports data above the “Moneyball” techniques employed by baseball coach Billy Beane to gain an advantage against wealthier teams.
He said the tool was effective in rugby, where budgets are often constrained by salary caps, but that it could be applied to cricket and football as well. ASI, founded two years ago, counts several prominent London tech investors as backers, including Jaan Tallin, an early employee at Skype.
James Molyneux, the head of analysis at London Irish, did not confirm whether the club had signed any players using the tool, but said it had found players who had gone on to be capped several weeks before they came to prominence.