If you want to understand where AI is really changing sport, don’t start with the highlight reel. Start with the parts of sport that rarely make the headlines: the volunteer inbox at midnight, the half-empty sports hall that still costs a fortune to heat and the pitch that looks fine until it suddenly doesn’t. At the AI Sports Summit, three stories made one thing clear: the next leap in sport won’t only be about smarter athletes, but about smarter systems.
Gilles Mangen and Sebastian Seifert from Clubee began where most federations and clubs feel the pain most: administration. Not glamorous, but existential. Their argument is simple: millions of federations and clubs run on thin staff and volunteers, while the expectations keep rising, and legacy software keeps them stuck in the past. Clubee’s response is an “AI-first management platform” that reframes the job. Volunteers shouldn’t spend their evenings doing repetitive work; they should spend their time making decisions. In their model, the virtual assistant does the execution, while humans keep ownership of the final call.
What makes this feel real, not theoretical, is the scale. Clubee reports more than 60.000 hours of work saved and a target of over 2.000,000 tasks automated. They also show the ecosystem footprint: founded in 2014, a team of 21, working with more than 40 federations and over 4,000 clubs. The promise isn’t “replace people.” It’s “give people their time back,” without losing the culture that makes club sport human.
The most telling detail is how they treat AI recommendations: as proposals that must be validated. In their examples, the assistant writes match reports, prepares social media graphics, suggests sponsor outreach, creates discount campaigns and prompts payment reminders but always with a human “yes” before publishing or sending. That design choice is more than a technical workflow; it’s a trust strategy. In community sport, legitimacy matters as much as efficiency.
Then there’s the problem every federation knows and every club feels: scheduling. Clubee calls out the reality that many federations still build schedules manually in Excel and legacy tools. When time slots clash, venues overlap or late changes ripple through the season, it’s not just inconvenience. It’s dropouts, frustration and a competition product that feels amateurish. Their AI-powered scheduling is positioned as a way to generate optimal, conflict-free fixtures across leagues while keeping manual control where needed.
Susanne Ingemann’s HallMonitor talk zoomed out from the back office to the built environment. Because even if clubs had perfect administration, sport still runs into the same bottleneck in city after city: space. Waiting lists on one side, underused capacity on the other. HallMonitor’s core idea is blunt and overdue: stop guessing how facilities are used and start measuring, continuously and responsibly.
They’ve been doing it for years at scale, with more than 1.500 sensors and roughly 50.000 measurements a day across Europe, working with municipalities and multiple facility types. The technology story matters here because it’s built for public trust. HallMonitor describes an IoT device with Edge AI that runs computer vision locally, does not rely on LLMs and transmits only blurred images and metadata to minimize data exposure. In a world where “monitoring” can trigger immediate resistance, their framing is important: this is about utilization, governance and fairness, avoiding wasted resources and optimizing what already exists.
“As all three companies were nominated for the European AI Sports award, it was Turfcoach who brings this award to Germany.”
The cases put numbers to what “optimization” can mean. In testimonials, municipalities describe the impact of having raw, verified data for politicians and for allocation decisions. One facility reports a 300% increase in rental income after using insights to better monetize available space. Another case highlights how utilization of hall reservations improved by around 10 percentage points within a year. This isn’t just tech; it’s a conversation based on evidence rather than assumptions.
And then Hans Biener brought the story down to ground level, literally. Turfcoach tackled a part of sport that is both essential and oddly invisible: sports ground maintenance. Their message was that cities are going digital, but many sport grounds are still maintained in an analogue way, creating a “black hole” of costs, complaints and missing proof. Turfcoach positions itself as the “world’s first AI platform for sport grounds maintenance,” trusted by over 100 organisations.
The compelling twist is that their AI doesn’t just monitor; it teaches better routines. With real-time insights, tracking of activities and assets and operational recommendations, the platform promises lower costs through efficient resource use. The efficiency claims are striking: precision irrigation supported by shade analytics and evapotranspiration data and smarter use of systems like light rigs and undersoil heating, translating into major reductions in water use and energy costs. The story isn’t “AI replaces the grounds team.” It’s “AI finally gives the grounds team the measurement and credibility they deserve.”
As all three companies were nominated for the European AI Sports award, it was Turfcoach who brings this award to Germany. All companies are a great example for the sports industry. Taken together, these three presentations draw a new map of AI in sport. Clubee shows how to protect the volunteer economy by turning administration into assisted decision-making. HallMonitor shows how municipalities can unlock capacity and legitimacy through privacy-aware measurement. Turfcoach shows how better data can reduce waste, improve quality and professionalize the least celebrated but most critical layer of sport infrastructure.
