Key Takeaways
- Game1, a Swiss-built predictive AI scouting app, is expanding from Europe into the US youth soccer market.
- The platform compares smartphone-recorded drills against a half-million datapoints from European leagues to project player potential.
- Game1 has raised $1.1 million to date and is now seeking another $500,000 to fund its US growth.
- Advisers include former NWSL CMO Julie Haddon and RB Leipzig CEO Tatjana Haenni, the first woman to lead a Bundesliga club.
- The founders aim to prioritize future potential over current performance, giving late developers and defenders second looks.
How the Platform Evaluates Young Players
Game1 uses a smartphone camera to record athletes completing a series of athletic and soccer-specific drills. The results are measured against roughly 500,000 datapoints collected from European leagues, producing an assessment of each player’s strengths and weaknesses along with guidance on what to work on next.
The company frames this as building a baseline rather than chasing the next superstar. “We’re creating a baseline,” said CEO Amir Donath. “There is a certain minimum that you need for your first touch, for your speed, for your ball control.” He stressed that the technology is built to avoid overlooking players, a point he returned to over any claim about identifying generational talent.
CTO Yaniv Donath said the algorithm is designed to help players who get fewer chances to stand out, including late physical developers and defenders who have limited opportunities to shine in games. He described the goal as giving athletes second looks rather than cutting them.
Funding and the Move Into the US Market
Game1 has raised $1.1 million so far and is now seeking an additional $500,000 to support its US expansion. The platform launches stateside after building its data foundation in European academy soccer.
The founders bring academic and corporate backgrounds to the venture. Amir, the CEO, worked as a McKinsey consultant before earning an MBA from Stanford. Yaniv, the CTO, holds a master’s from Stanford and a PhD from Cambridge, where his machine learning research focused on the early universe. He has said Game1 applies techniques similar to those he used in cosmology.
That academic path also shaped the product. While at Cambridge, Yaniv met Petar Velickovic, a lecturer and senior scientist at Google DeepMind who helped develop TacticAI, a tool built for Liverpool FC. Yaniv has said the connection showed him how heavily sports technology skews toward the elite level, and how little of it addresses development tracking for everyday players.
A Bet on Potential Over Current Performance
Game1’s central pitch is projecting future potential rather than ranking present ability. Amir said coaches can already spot the fastest kid or the one who dribbles past everyone, but they struggle to know whether a strong young player will develop into a strong older one.
The advisory bench reinforces the development angle. Haddon said clubs and leagues across both the sporting and business sides are asking how AI can accelerate their talent pipelines. She pointed to objective development guidance for players, paired with grassroots infrastructure, as a long-term strengthener of the sport.
Game1 enters a US amateur market that already includes competitors such as ai.io and JuniStat. Its founders argue that tracking actual development over time, rather than snapshot evaluation, remains the unsolved problem they are targeting.
What Wider Access to Scouting AI Could Mean
Game1’s US launch arrives as youth soccer organizations weigh how much to invest in player evaluation technology. A smartphone-based tool aimed at the amateur market lowers the barrier for clubs that cannot afford elite scouting systems.
Adoption will hinge on two questions. First, how the European-trained model performs against American player data. Second, whether “second looks” translate into real roster and development decisions for clubs and families. If the answer to both is yes, the more durable shift may be cultural: moving youth evaluation away from who looks best today toward who can reach a defined standard tomorrow.
Source: Sports Business Journal, Joe Lemire, June 1, 2026
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