Young sporting talent is being spotted at the grassroots by AI, but it’s leaving parents signing contracts they don’t understand

The stakes of youth talent scouting have never felt higher. This past Premier League season delivered some of the most remarkable young breakthrough performances in the competition’s history, such as Arsenal’s Max Dowman and Liverpool’s Rio Ngumoha.

As clubs inside and outside football eye up the next generation of stars for the season to come, technology is becoming a vital part of the selection process, from the highest heights of the sporting world down to grassroots.

South Croydon resident Niraj Patel noticed this himself when attending his daughter’s selection process at Croygas Sports Club. A sensor camera recorded her speed and movement, and an AI model processed the data alongside the human coach’s assessment. She was later selected to play at county level for the Surrey Junior Cricket Championship. Afterwards, Patel was asked to sign a consent form – written in legal jargon with little explanation – covering the use of his daughter’s data.

This kind of setup is becoming increasingly common in British sport. Football clubs, rugby academies, cricket boards and tennis programmes around the country are using AI tools to help identify and recruit talent.

Lily Ashford, whose daughter trains at a Wimbledon tennis programme, had a similar experience when she was asked to sign a consent form without explanation. She asked the safeguarding team to go through it with her in plain terms and has since been speaking to other parents at meetings about the rights they hold under data protection law.

“Many parents of young players do not realise that they have real rights when it comes to how their child’s data is handled,” she says. “They can ask a club or academy what data they hold, request that it be deleted and challenge how it is being used.”

According to DataIntelo, the global AI-enhanced sports scouting market was valued at $1.42bn (£1.06bn) GBP in 2024 and is expected to reach $12.39bn (£9.24bn) by 2033. A 2025 survey of sports industry professionals found that three out of four professional teams now use real-time analytics as part of their standard operations.

The idea of using data to assess sporting talent is not new. In 2002, the American baseball team Oakland Athletics used statistical analysis to find undervalued players overlooked by their rivals, allowing them to compete successfully against much wealthier clubs. The story was later told in the 2011 film Moneyball, and is widely credited with accelerating the use of data-driven methods across professional sport. British institutions have been following the same approach, with new technology making it accessible at grassroots level.

“Many parents of young players do not realise that they have real rights when it comes to how their child’s data is handled”

London-based company ai.io, whose aiScout platform is used by Chelsea FC, Burnley FC and Major League Soccer, allows clubs to assess a player’s physical, technical and cognitive performance using footage shot with a smartphone.  According to CNN Business, the platform currently holds data on around 100,000 players globally. Much of what these systems analyse – match footage, competition results and published performance statistics – is information already in the public domain. What AI adds is the ability to process and cross-reference it much faster and at a greater scale than a human analyst could manage alone.

But Prakhar Agrawal, an AI consultant based in London, points out that not all the data involved is publicly available. “AI uses databases of players to strategise, but it also notes physicalities such as ethnicity and age, which may not be in the public domain but are held by clubs,” he says. “That may affect decision making if those behind the process carry biases or seek to push a particular agenda.”

With the season over, clubs will now be looking to tie down promising youngsters on professional contracts, which players can sign from the age of 17. For families involved in that process, it’s worth knowing exactly what data rights their children are signing over, too.

Featured Image: Cricket batsman hitting the ball. Credit: ChrisVanLennepPhoto (Adobe Stock)