Case Study: SciSports achieves real-time, AI-driven soccer analytics with SAS Viya (SAS)

SAS Viya enables real-time analysis of streaming soccer data

SciSports, a Dutch sports‑analytics startup founded in 2012, set out to bring real‑time, end‑to‑end analytics to soccer—capturing the full game (including off‑ball action) across thousands of matches to improve player recruitment, fan experiences and coaching decisions. The core challenge was processing large volumes of streaming video and tracking data, applying machine learning and deep learning in real time, and moving research models from open‑source experiments into scalable production.

Working with SAS Viya (including SAS Visual Data Mining & Machine Learning, Visual Analytics, Visual Statistics and SAS Event Stream Processing), SciSports built BallJames: a 14‑camera system that produces real‑time 3‑D tracking and deploys in‑memory deep‑learning inference on cameras or in the cloud. The platform powers the weekly SciSkill index (90,000 players across 244 leagues), speeds time to market by simplifying production, scales processing on demand, and has enabled clubs to identify undervalued talent and realize measurable transfer and performance gains.

SciSports

Giels Brouwer

Founder and Chief Innovation Officer