West Ham United today announced a new collaboration with Crayon and Amazon Web Services (AWS), which sees three giants in their own field team up to develop an AI-powered football scouting platform. This innovative scouting solution is set to transform the way football talent is identified, analysed and recruited, revolutionising modern day scouting within the sport.
West Ham United, famed for its status as the ‘Academy of Football’, is proud of its long-standing reputation of being a front-runner in talent development. This collaboration ensures the Premier League side will stay at the forefront of innovation within the sport as they become the first to implement a generative AI-powered end-to-end scouting tool, to support the recruitment of future world-class talent for its First Team and Academy.
The move underscores the Club’s dedication to remaining at the cutting edge of technological advancement, ensuring its world-class scouts and coaches can continue to identify and nurture top talent. The platform will empower scouts with best-in-class data, providing an extra layer of knowledge to further allow them to make evidence-led decisions on talent identification and recruitment, alongside traditional scouting practices.
The London club is working with Crayon, an expert in data and AI solutions, and cloud computing provider, AWS, to develop the platform. The platform will integrate AI, machine learning (ML) and generative AI capabilities using Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock. This will supply West Ham United with the ability to gather, analyse, benchmark and compare player data from across the world to make data-backed recruitment and talent identification decisions. The club will also have support from Crayon’s Center of Excellence, and the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, which helps organisations to successfully build and implement generative AI solutions.
“The platform we are developing using AI and machine learning builds comprehensive models to evaluate players across multiple dimensions – performance, playing style, team dynamics, age, experience, and financial fit – ensuring recruitment aligns with team goals,” said Maximilian Hahn, Head of Technical Recruitment & Analysis at West Ham United. “By automating and streamlining these processes, we can analyse vast datasets across markets and efficiently identify top talent, making player selection more strategic, consistent, and future-focused.”
Nathan Thompson, Executive Director at West Ham United added:
“This collaboration marks a significant milestone for West Ham United, as we put ourselves at the forefront of innovation by working alongside AWS and Crayon, both industry global leaders in their respective fields. As a Club, to have an AI-powered talent identification platform which is solely tailored to the needs of our scouting and recruitment team, will ensure we continue our proud heritage of attracting exciting talent to London Stadium.”
“West Ham United are proud to be bold and forward thinking in our approach and this groundbreaking announcement highlights our commitment to utilising innovation on and off the pitch to achieve our goals. We are looking forward to beginning this collaboration alongside AWS and Crayon in what is a pioneering moment for the future of talent identification in the sport.”
Tim Ellefsen, VP of Public Cloud at Crayon, expressed enthusiasm about the collaboration:
“Building on successful AI projects in the German Bundesliga, we are committed to pushing the boundaries of what this technology can achieve. This collaboration between ourselves, AWS, and West Ham United is a testament to our dedication to innovation and excellence. Leveraging data as a key competitive advantage means that this AI-powered scouting tool will revolutionize the way football talent is scouted and evaluated, delivering unmatched accuracy and efficiency to the process.”
Joe Carroll, UK Head of Telco, Media, Entertainment, Games and Sports at AWS, said:
“The world’s top sports organisations are increasingly using AWS to build data-driven solutions and reinvent the way sports are experienced, played, and managed. We’re proud to collaborate with West Ham United and Crayon to build this innovative AI-powered platform, which will revolutionise both talent scouting within the club, and the business of football.”
