Welcome Presentation

Conference objectives and key data insights delivered by TransferRoom.

Becoming Evidence-Led: The Culture Question

Exploring the practical reality of data-led decision-making in football, and cutting through hype to examine how evidence replaces instinct across clubs, agencies, and governing bodies.

Key discussions cover earning a seat at the table with coaches and ownership, overcoming cultural resistance to get unstuck, and separating genuine innovation from noise to define the future of football intelligence.

Sophie Tomlinson

Global Data Science & Analytics Lead, CAA Portas

Drawing on five years at football consultancy Twenty First Group, where she became Chief Data Scientist, and a start as a UK government economist, Sophie works at CAA Portas. The sport-specific consultancy within CAA, they help sports leaders worldwide use data and AI to make better decisions across performance, commercial and operations.

Buying In: How New Owners Are Building Data-Led Clubs from Day One

Examining evidence-led culture from the top down, this panel explores how a new generation of analytics-minded investors builds clubs around data from day one. Discussions cover using analytics for club acquisitions, navigating the first 100 days, and establishing systems in emerging markets.

Panelists will address balancing local identity with imported models while measuring ROI across player trading and asset value.

Ed Malyon

General Partner, Innovatio Capital / Co-Owner, Querétaro FC

Founder of The Athletic UK, which was sold to the New York Times for $550m, Ed now oversees data and sporting strategy at Querétaro, helping a new ownership group build a Liga MX club around analytics from day one. Querétaro became the first majority-US-owned club in the league, making it a live test of the data-led, emerging-market approach this panel explores.

From Data to Decision: Real Use Cases Inside Football Operations

Moving from theory to practice, this session delivers concrete examples of data insights directly shaping recruitment, contracts, and team selection.

Panelists will explore how clubs integrate internal and external sources into a single trusted view, what daily collaboration between data teams and football operations looks like, and how to bridge the persistent gap between analytical output and actionable decision-making.

Nicolai F. Pedersen

Head of Football Data Analytics, Brøndby IF

Nicolai came into football from machine learning research, with a PhD from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in deep learning for audiovisual speech analysis. He joined Brøndby as a football data scientist in 2022, bringing a research-grade approach to a club that has been building its analytics capability since 2015 - an approach that led to Copenhagen Business School writing a case study on how the club made sports data an integral part of its activities.

Kevin Jeffries

Transfer Coordinator and Head of Data Scouting, OGC Nice

Kevin spent nearly five years at one of football's biggest data providers, before moving to the club side in 2021 to design and implement OGC Nice's data strategy for first-team performance and scouting. With more than ten years in professional football, he has seen data from both sides: as the supplier building it, and as the person making it useful inside a club.

Your choice of interactive data and AI workshops

The afternoon moves from the stage to the roundtable. Attendees choose from a range of workshop topics, shared in advance, covering the questions football intelligence leaders are working through right now.

Each session brings together a small group of peers for an open, hands-on discussion of the challenges that matter most to them. It's a chance to compare approaches, test ideas and leave with practical takeaways from people doing the same work at other organisations.

Please note that these sessions are strictly behind closed doors and not recorded.

One-to-one Meetings

A short series of one-to-one meetings between attendees, with 4 slots of 15 minutes.