The story behind Sevilla's technology-driven mission in Indian football

Top European football clubs have been in India for some time. The growing appetite for the world’s favourite sport in one of the biggest and as yet unexplored sports market is too good an opportunity for established clubs to overlook.

Atletico Madrid were one of the first big clubs to enter the Indian football arena in 2014, becoming a co-owner of the Kolkata franchise in the newly formed Indian Super League (ISL). Thereafter, other European clubs followed with City Football Group acquiring stakes in Mumbai City FC, Bundesliga outfit Borussia Dortmund partnering Hyderabad FC and RB Leipzig teaming up with FC Goa.

The partnerships were mainly in the top tier of Indian football - the ISL. Last week, another international collaborative event materialised in Indian football, with a different area of focus.

In January 2021, Spanish side Sevilla FC entered a five-year partnership deal with FC Bengaluru United (FCBU), who compete in the I-League second division.

It is not a traditional partnership. Sevilla are not setting up a coaching academy in order to capture a slice of the nascent Indian football market. What they are in India for is what the country, and specifically Bengaluru, is known for - technology.

Data and analytics have become the next frontier in sports and the science that goes into team analysis and preparation is already at an industrial scale. With artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) a reality now, it is only natural for that technology to seep into professional sports.

Somebody has to make sense of the numbers that come out of it, which is where the Sevilla-FCBU collaboration comes in.

The top management of Sevilla, including club president Jose Castro Carmona, was in Bengaluru the