Lenovo’s World Cup AI hands every team pro data

At this year’s FIFA World Cup, volatility on the pitch is being paired with a quiet technology shift off it: Lenovo’s Football AI Pro and other systems give all 48 teams access to the same tournament data foundation, along with AI-assisted tools used for match

For a tournament already defined by shock results. the World Cup’s sharpest surprises are also happening in the margins—moments decided by millimeters. and matches that flip after the final whistle on the scoreboard. Cape Verde. making their first World Cup appearance. held cofavorite Spain to a scoreless draw in Atlanta. before coming from behind to draw 2-2 with Uruguay.

Then came another kind of volatility: Paraguay eliminated Germany, the four-time champion, on penalties after a controversial video assistant referee (VAR) call wiped out a German extra-time goal for a foul in the box.

Behind both the drama and the fine print is a technology decision that reaches far beyond any one match.

Lenovo built an artificial intelligence tool called Football AI Pro that gives all 48 teams access to FIFA’s tournament data. Lenovo describes it as a knowledge assistant that orchestrates multiple AI agents across more than 2. 000 football-specific metrics and petabytes of tracking. performance. and historical data. Every team began the tournament with the same data foundation—from Spain. a squad with deep experience and extensive analytics infrastructure. to debutant Curaçao.

That even starting point is part of the larger question now hovering over the tournament: what changes when advanced football intelligence leaves elite back rooms and lands in the hands of every team at the World Cup?

The system isn’t confined to laptops. Football AI Pro is also available on teams’ mobile phones, giving players and coaching staff direct access. A source close to FIFA said teams and players appear to be using it extensively after matches to review individual and team performance and compare results with previous games.

Lenovo’s partnership reach extends further than scouting reports. Building on a partnership FIFA announced in October 2024. the company developed an AI-powered 3D model of all 1. 248 players competing this summer. Lenovo says these avatars support offside reviews and give fans a clearer view of close calls from multiple angles.

There’s also the infrastructure layer that keeps the tournament moving. Lenovo says ThinkSystem servers at FIFA’s International Broadcast Center in Dallas process and distribute live match content to more than 1. 000 screens across FIFA venues. cutting streaming latency from roughly 40 seconds to under 5.

The push is led by Ken Wong. global president of Lenovo’s Solutions & Services Group. who says one goal is to use technology to improve how the game is played. officiated. and presented. In comments to Fast Company. Wong said: “For us. it’s about how we can put together our technology. make a promise to the game. and prove it.” He added: “We are super well known for our hardware portfolio. from pocket to the edge to the cloud. Where we have been doing a lot of work is helping our customers. including FIFA. understand how different Lenovo is today. and our capabilities beyond our PC endpoint devices.”.

Wong doesn’t claim equal access will automatically produce equal results. He points instead to how FIFA values the platform: it makes FIFA’s proprietary data available to every team. “Before, only the powerful teams could have a highly talented analytics team and the computing power to match. However, our job is not to teach them how to use Football AI Pro. Some teams use and will use Football AI Pro better than others,” Wong said. He continued: “We are just making sure we unleash the full power of technology. democratize AI and FIFA’s proprietary assets. to make the game more interesting and more fair.”.

Lenovo’s CTO. Tolga Kurtoglu. said a similar idea at the time Football AI Pro launched at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Lenovo also tested parts of the technology earlier: the company had deployed early versions of several technologies at the FIFA Club World Cup in summer 2025. using that tournament as a test before the larger event this summer. That earlier deployment. Lenovo said. helped it learn. iterate. and improve before rolling out at World Cup scale. including an Intelligent Command Center that uses real-time AI summaries to help manage tournament operations across three countries.

Kurtoglu also said deeper AI and data use could affect tactics, decision-making, and tournament planning. “The more data you have, the more analytics and AI you can apply, and eventually that will change tactics, analysis and even commentary,” he said.

The tournament’s AI isn’t just in the dashboard—it’s on the sidelines and in the officiating workflow.

One of the most visible technologies is Referee View. the AI-stabilized. head-mounted camera footage that shows viewers what officials see during key moments. Wong said building this year’s AI-stabilized video version required solving three practical engineering problems: the camera had to be light enough for a referee to wear for more than 90 minutes; the battery had to last through water breaks and any additional time required beyond regulation 90 minutes; and the footage had to reach broadcasters with very low latency.

Lenovo said its first approach didn’t meet expectations. Wong described trying to run everything through a single large language model. then finding that latency wasn’t as good as expected and power consumption was too high. “When we first did it, we just put everything into a single large language model. And we found the result was not super promising. because the latency wasn’t as good as we expected. and the power we consumed was a lot. ” Wong said. The team then rebuilt the pipeline around Lenovo’s internal architecture, called xIQ.

Wong said the new setup splits the work into smaller tasks: “Indeed. the whole AI video-stabilizing task can be divided into four different subtasks. ” he explained. “So we divided it into four subtasks and asked four smaller AI models to do the four tasks. then we integrate everything together. The latency is a lot shorter and power consumption a lot better.”.

The effort also reflects a lesson in applied AI for real-time constraints. Wong said—larger models aren’t always the best fit when systems must meet strict power and latency limits. He added that Lenovo had used similar thinking in its own supply chain. where video analytics are used in quality control for manufacturing systems. “We’re not football experts,” Wong said.

Lenovo also built the human side of the project into the rollout. The company embedded engineers with FIFA’s staff for 18 months before kickoff.

And then there is the “digital body” behind offside calls.

Lenovo says every player was digitally scanned before the tournament began. The company says the process takes about a second per athlete and produces the 3D model now feeding VAR and offside systems. including the call that ended Colombia’s celebration against Portugal. In that Portugal group stage match against Colombia. Colombia briefly appeared to have scored a stoppage-time winner when center back Davinson Sánchez headed in a corner. A video review ruled his toe offside by a very small margin.

Wong acknowledged the potential challenge of a tournament moving faster than a scan. Athletes change over a monthlong tournament—they can lose weight. alter their stride after an injury. or carry fatigue differently in the third week from the start. Wong was asked whether calls this precise are being measured against bodies that may have changed since the original scan.

“The scan is only done once, and minute changes might not affect the outcome by a material amount,” he said. “Minute changes won’t have a substantial impact because we are constantly working on the accuracy improvement we can produce. A lot of the video footage will be affected by lighting, weather … and the speed of the player. Those are the main parameters in our modeling.”.

Wong said the digital-figure system originally came from outside football. He said Lenovo first developed related technology for robotics. “The technology, when it first came for ourselves, was for our robotic solutions,” Wong said. “We need IP to create a digital space. a digital twin. so we can orchestrate a robot working in 3D space the same way it exists in physical space. The same platform is now being applied to these 3D avatars to provide more accurate input for the referee’s judgment.”.

That leads to the most sensitive boundary in any match: who decides.

AI-stabilized referee footage and 3D player models now help inform decisions on goals, fouls, and offsides. But Wong said Lenovo’s role is limited to providing technology. “There’s been a very clear divide of roles and responsibilities,” he said. “Lenovo is a technology provider, and FIFA runs the greatest football tournaments on the planet. Our job is to explore all the technology options to help FIFA achieve whatever it intends to.”.

Wong added that the referee still has final authority. “He now has a lot of additional information and data assistance to help him make the right call. But he makes the final judgment.”

The distinction matters because a referee supported by centimeter-level 3D modeling is working with a different evidence base than one judging an offside line by eye. While the rulebook still credits the human official with the decision. that decision now depends on a technical system shaping what the official sees.

Lenovo’s World Cup technology is designed to reduce the analytics gap between football’s richest federations and the rest of the field. It does not make every team equally capable, and it does not determine match results on its own. It does give every team access to a level of data and computing power that was once far harder to obtain.

In a tournament already shaped by a larger field and narrower margins, the shift is part of why the gap between favorites and underdogs can feel smaller than usual.

FIFA World Cup Lenovo Football AI Pro VAR offside technology referee view 3D player avatars Ken Wong Tolga Kurtoglu ThinkSystem servers International Broadcast Center Intelligent Command Center