Serie A Gets in on ESports with FIFA

A brand new ESports tournament is set to hit Europe after the Serie A, in combination with marketing partner Infront Media, launched a brand new tournament for the FIFA game series.

The FIFA series is widely regarded as one of the most popular sports titles of all time. Their latest game, FIFA 20, reached 10 million worldwide players in October of last year.

Over the years, FIFA has been a staple of many football fans gaming collection. Only recently has the game delved into the world of ESports.

FIFA and Electronic Arts (EA) first introduced competitive online play in 2009 with their first iteration of the online game mode, ‘Ultimate Team’. Gamers could select any players to play in their sides against another gamer in an online match, with the best players earning promotion to higher divisions.

In FIFA 17, EA began looking to ESports and a more serious approach for online gaming with the introduction of ‘Weekend League’. Here, players would build squads as per usual, except it wasn’t just promotion on the line. Gamers could obtain better players as a result of performing better than everyone else.

Very quickly, EA and FIFA saw the market’s need for a competition to separate the best from the very best and ESports’ collaboration with FIFA began.

The Premier League, MLS and our own A-League have since jumped on board and teams from all of those competitions have registered players to represent their respective clubs in ESports leagues and competitions.

Now, the Serie A has also seen the potential in ESports and a tournament has been launched.

Qualification for the sport is limited to participants who are aged 16 and over, are willing to represent a Serie A top flight club such as Juventus, Inter Milan and AS Roma and they must play on the PlayStation 4 console.

Luigi De Siervo, Serie A Chief Executive has this to say regarding the announcement of the tournament.

“ESports are a phenomenon in continuous growth and expansion and represent one of the key sectors of business in sport.”

“We have the great opportunity to involve an increasingly broad and cross-sectional target, thus bringing us closer to the new generations. All fans will now be able to follow a new championship and the best will be able to represent their favourite team by challenging themselves with their gamepads.”

The ESports competitions, particularly those based around FIFA, have generated copious amounts of attention on popular video sharing platform YouTube and online streaming service Twitch.

FIFA has become a very niche area for people with large areas of reach on the aforementioned websites. Many ‘YouTubers’ have begun playing professionally and have attracted large amounts of fans as a result of their online exploits.

Many of these fans attempt to follow in the footsteps of these professional gamers and as a result, the attention generated for ESports and especially FIFA has spiked ever since ‘Weekend League’ was born.

Online play in the tournament will begin on Monday and Tuesday, with a Grand Final set for May later this year.

 

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Liverpool FC Teams Up with SAS in Multi-Year AI Marketing Deal

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Under a new multi-year deal, Liverpool FC has partnered with analytics and software company SAS as its Official AI Marketing Automation Partner, integrating advanced data and AI technology into the club’s marketing and fan engagement activities.

As part of the agreement, Liverpool will deploy SAS Customer Intelligence 360 and SAS Viya, leveraging the platforms to enable marketing automation, campaign orchestration and data-driven decision-making across large consumer environments.

The integration of SAS technology is designed to optimise campaign operations and efficiency, while supporting deeper audience segmentation and more personalised fan engagement.

Moving beyond a typical logo-led sponsorship, the Liverpool–SAS partnership is built around technology adoption, with SAS tools woven into Liverpool’s marketing processes to influence how campaigns are created, evaluated and improved.

Chief Commercial Officer, Ben Latty highlighted the role of SAS technology in enhancing efficiency and insight across the club.

“Our partnership with SAS represents an important step in how we continue to evolve our marketing approach. Integrating their technology will give our team access to powerful tools – including SAS Customer Intelligence 360 platform and SAS Viya – that will help streamline our work and support better decision-making,” he said via press release.

SAS Chief Marketing Officer, Jennifer Chase underscored how the partnership leverages data and AI to elevate the fan experience for one of football’s most passionate global audiences.

“Liverpool FC has one of the most passionate fan bases in the world, and we’re proud to help elevate that experience through the power of data and AI. With SAS technology, the club can turn massive volumes of data into meaningful, real-time insights that allow us to get the right message, to the right fan, at the right time – connecting fans from Anfield to anywhere in the world,” she said via press release.

Alongside commercial operations, the deal includes a STEM-focused education element delivered in collaboration with the LFC Foundation, reflecting a growing trend for technology partnerships to blend enterprise deployment with community impact.

Measuring the Immeasurable: How StepOut is Transforming Football Analytics

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Match analysis demands long hours of tedious, menial work. Analysts hand-crop clips, rewatch sequences and track every individual player, burning exorbitant amounts of time and money.

Even with entire teams dedicated to the task, analysts cannot fully interpret or understand the movements, positioning and actions of every player at every moment.

When Key Data Gets Lost

As a result, even large clubs allow critical data to fly under the radar. Professional analysis can misread causes, misconstrue effects and realise inaccurate conclusions. Players pay the price. When analysts miss key actions, they fail to properly assess individual contributions.

So much more goes into winning games than the striker who scores, or the keeper who saves. Collective pressure, positioning, and presence does. Its intangibility and sheer complexity means it can never be properly evaluated by humans.

StepOut addresses this gap with AI-powered software that streamlines and optimises the analytical process. Coaches upload a video recording of a match, and the platform produces clear, usable data analytics for every player. Unlike human analysts, StepOut evaluates every metric, movement and action simultaneously, without fatigue or bias.

The company’s mission is simple: deliver more accurate sports analytics that turn today’s talent into tomorrow’s stars. By extending elite-level analysis to under-resourced grassroots clubs, StepOut builds a more equal, merit-based football ecosystem.

Impact at the Frontline of Australian Football

Now partnered with more than 7,500 clubs worldwide, StepOut operates across Europe, Asia and the Americas. In Australia, its influence is most visible at the frontline of player development.

Partnerships with Football NSW, Geelong Galaxy, Kalamunda United and Manly United have integrated the platform into local pathways, embedding elite analysis into everyday training and match preparation.

Player Management Director at Football NSW, Phil Myall describes the software as “essential for coding player actions and offering stats that improve our strategy”, underscoring its growing role in how Australian clubs assess performance and develop talent.

Recognition from Football’s Elite

Internationally, StepOut has earned recognition through awards in Ajax’s Reimagine Football Challenge and Real Madrid’s Next Accelerator for Asia.

Ajax, renowned for its data-driven development model and tactical innovation, identified StepOut as a tool capable of enhancing talent identification and player growth. Real Madrid’s accelerator placed the platform among a select group of technologies shaping the future of football performance across emerging markets.

These accolades reinforce StepOut’s credibility at the highest level. In an industry crowded with untested analytics platforms and superficial metrics, endorsement from elite clubs signals trust, rigour and scalability. The recognition confirms that StepOut’s models deliver not just technical sophistication, but practical value in real football environments. For grassroots clubs and developing players, this validation matters. It ensures access to technology trusted by the game’s most powerful institutions.

At its core, StepOut builds its brand on accessibility and precision. The platform’s intuitive interface removes complexity rather than adding to it. Coaches do not need analytical backgrounds or data expertise; StepOut converts indecipherable VODs into clear, actionable insights. By lowering technical and financial barriers, the software empowers clubs that previously lacked access to advanced performance tools.

Redefining Performance in the Modern Game

Across the broader football ecosystem, StepOut is reshaping how the sport defines success and contribution. By measuring off-ball movement, spatial awareness and defensive cohesion, the platform captures the game’s unseen dimensions. This shift encourages smarter coaching, sharper scouting and a deeper understanding of football’s collective nature. Over time, it may reshape how clubs train, select and value players.

As StepOut expands across competitions and continents, its brand has become synonymous with clarity, fairness and innovation. It does not replace human judgement; it strengthens it. In a sport where marginal gains decide careers and outcomes, the ability to measure what was once immeasurable is transformative. StepOut is not just analysing matches, it is redefining how performance is understood and who earns the opportunity to be recognised.

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