Empowering sport with
foresight, not forecasts.
A European alliance building the research, policy and training foundation for AI in sport. Coordinated by Collective Innovation AS under Erasmus+.
Sport is talking about
yesterday and today.
We ask about
tomorrow.
The sector is fluent in hindsight: what worked last season, which innovation stuck, which trend died. It has learned to speak in insight: live analytics, real-time sentiment, operational dashboards. What is almost always missing is the third lens — foresight.
AI is no longer a niche tool bolted onto the sport sector. It has entered every layer of the game: performance, the way athletes train and recover; fandom, the way audiences are understood and served; and the governance of sport itself — how federations make decisions, how integrity is protected, how value is distributed.
SF4Sport exists to give European sport the vocabulary, the evidence and the shared infrastructure to ask better questions about that future — before those questions become emergencies.
Turning uncertainty into actionable strategy for a resilient European sport sector.
Strategic Foresight
We combine horizon scanning, scenario building and mixed-method research to map how AI is reshaping performance, fandom and governance. The goal is never to pick a winning future — it is to equip decision-makers to act clearly across several.
- Horizon-scan reports across 200+ European sport organisations
- Three-scenario toolkit for federations, clubs and venues
- Annual European AI-in-sport signal index
Education & Literacy
Foresight is a skill, not a crystal ball. SF4Sport turns method into curriculum — modules, workshops and credentials designed for executives, coaches and policy leads who need to reason about AI under uncertainty.
- Executive training modules on AI governance and ethics
- Federation-level workshops with scenario-based decision labs
- Open educational resources published under Erasmus+ licensing
Ecosystem Synergy
The project is also an infrastructure play. We link universities, federations, technology clusters and regulators into a shared space where evidence, tools and cautionary tales circulate — so the sector learns together, not in 17 siloes.
- Consortium of 17 organisations across 12 European countries
- Cross-country dissemination channels and joint events
- Shared repository of methods, datasets and policy briefs
36 months · 3 phases
Project Trajectory
M1 – M12
Foresight & Landscape
Horizon scanning, evidence base, baseline surveys across the consortium. We map how AI already reshapes performance, fandom and governance across Europe.
- Consortium kick-off
- Baseline landscape report
- First scenario set
M13 – M24
Pilot & Build
Training modules, policy prototypes and federation-level pilots. Foresight methods turn into curricula, and the first governance frameworks are tested in real federations.
- Executive training launch
- Federation pilots
- Mid-term review
M25 – M36
Scale & Dissemination
We consolidate what worked, scale the training and tools, and open-source the evidence base — leaving the European sport sector with durable foresight infrastructure.
- Published AI-in-sport index
- Open curriculum
- Policy recommendations
“We are not building one more AI project for sport. We are building the infrastructure European sport needs to govern AI — together, across borders, before the sector is shaped by forces it did not choose.”
Official Funding Acknowledgment
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Erasmus+ Programme · Project 101246993