The UEFA Intelligence Centre
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Article summary
Delivering balanced insights to UEFA policy-makers, decision-takers, and key stakeholders.
Article top media content
Article body
The UEFA Intelligence Centre mission is to be recognised as a centre of excellence for strategic off-pitch football research. Since 2017, it has been delivering balanced insights directly to UEFA policy makers, decision takers and key stakeholders.
By bringing together technical expertise with data science, financial and commercial modelling, and econometricist experience, the UEFA Intelligence Centre provides a place to understand the present as well as to look forward and plan for the future – turning the wealth of data at its disposal into insights.
Football is a global cultural phenomenon and European football is at the heart of this. UEFA policy-makers and decision-takers are charged with steering European football during a time of unprecedented global interest for the game, and a rapidly changing environment of technology and consumer behaviour. While the basic essence of the sport remains simple on the pitch, it is anything but simple off it.
The decision of the UEFA Executive Committee to create the Intelligence Centre has no doubt helped UEFA leverage the unparalleled bank of knowledge and experience that the body has built up in recent years through running some of the world's most successful sports competitions. It is an important step to help UEFA remain a forward-looking, innovative and collaborative organisation, as the football and wider societal landscape changes.
Building the most comprehensive off-pitch research centre in football
The Intelligence Centre is meeting UEFA's objective of having the most comprehensive research centre in football by building and linking databases covering everything from club and national association finances to club ownership and league formats, from transfer activity and sporting results to media and commercial rights, from stadium profiles to player and head coach data across all 55 UEFA territories and further afield.
Performing analyses and building knowledge with an in-house philosophy
By performing all the analysis in-house rather than outsourcing it, UEFA can fully capture this strategic knowledge and remain extremely agile in approaching research projects and assessing policy alternatives. UEFA is now better placed to generate insights, model the potential outcomes of decisions, anticipate issues before they arise, place challenges in context, and identify policy options.
Intelligence Centre selected areas of analysis
| Football finances | Infrastructure & regulations | Careers & profiles | Performances |
| - Club finances - Club ownership - National Association finances | - Commercial & sponsorship - Stadium projects - Supporters - League & Cup structures | - Transfers & loans - Head coaches - Player careers & profiles - Agents | - Football demographics - Referee & disciplinary - Competition performances - National team performances |