The Impact of Information Technologies on the Scouting Process in Sports Games

Although it has attracted the attention of experts only in the last decade, sports analytics has its roots since the existence of organized sports. Any records of players or situations in the game that contribute to later decisionmaking during the competition can be considered as some kind of analytics. As an important part of these processes, scouting is at the core of coaching in sport games at all levels of competition. Coaches and managers try to enable improvements in competitive activity by exploring the key factors and mechanisms on which success in competition depends, both at the individual level as well as at the level of the entire team. The aim of this paper is to describe how technological development and ultimately information technology have influenced these processes, and specifically how modern tendencies affect performance management in sports games. Primarily, the development of data collection methods, from manual, through video, to the use of modern digital technology has led to an "explosion" of the amount of data collected. The huge amount of available data has resulted in the emergence of expert data systems specific to each sport game, which provides analytical support to coaches and managers in decision-making.