Sports Interactive have agreed a deal with elite sports performance analysts Prozone Sports in a partnership that will see professional football clubs across the world use the football management game to scout and recruit players.
The partnership means that the database built and maintained by Sports Interactive will be implemented into the Prozone RECRUITER tool – an online analysis platform used by professional football clubs to identify talented players. This sees a major development for the already popular Football Manager series, affirming the abilities and judgements of a scouting system containing over 1,300 staff utilizing for the games. There have been a number of stories over the years in which both managers and scouts have reportedly used the game for real-life applications, and this partnership solidifies the hard work put in by Sports Interactive.
Whilst there is no impact on the game side of this partnership, it reinforces the managerial edge many players of the series possess or develop in gameplay – and will likely sees them following players in real life based on their in game successes. Football Manager 2015 was recently given a November release date.