Our guest on Episode #81 of the TGG Podcast is Reed Shaffner, Chief Technology Officer at Teamworks.
Reed oversees the engineering, design, product and data science teams behind a platform used across professional and collegiate sport.
In this Episode, Reed told us where AI is genuinely working in football and where it isn't; warned about the security and privacy risks some clubs are underestimating; and explained how Teamworks Player ID is learning to identify how good a player will become, versus how good they look today.
SHOW NOTES =>
0:00: Introduction
1:39: Reed's role at Teamworks, and his route in through gaming and youth sport
3:17: What AI actually is — beyond the buzzword
5:42: How widely is AI being used in football?
6:45: Where it works well, and where it doesn't
7:25: Injury prediction — why the returns are still questionable
8:24: Hallucinations, and the two athletes who didn't exist
10:20: Case study: the NFL's Digital Athlete platform
11:28: Data quality, process and the role of human expertise
12:53: Privacy and security — what should never go into a model
14:12: It's not just medical data: contracts and schedules
14:43: The questions to ask any AI vendor
15:42: Data poisoning and the fabricated eye condition
17:32: Skills as a new attack vector — and what a skill is
18:49: Build or buy: what clubs are making themselves
19:41: Scout bias detection, and Kahneman on human bias
22:00: The rise of the 'head of AI' job title
22:50: Is US sport ahead of UK football?
23:27: Tracking data, and will AI mean fewer analysts?
25:26: AI inside the Teamworks products: from reactive to proactive
28:02: Player ID — what to do when metrics disagree
29:50: Predicting how good a player will become, not how good they are now
31:11: Bespoke clubs and individualised training
34:17: The future: cameras, youth football and undiscovered talent
36:04: Worries and fears: attackers, deepfakes and social engineering
38:01: Speaking at TGG Live '26 at Old Trafford
