Team Liquid, the largest organization in the gaming world, will work with the AI ​​solution Joule to manage the huge amounts of data generated by gaming competitions.

“There is an enormous amount of data in esports – I would even say too much,” said Thom Valks, Partnerships Manager at Team Liquid. His company processes at least a trillion data points. “How do you figure out what questions to ask? And then how do you quickly get answers to those questions? That was the main problem.”

Team Liquid was founded over 20 years ago and has become one of the most successful esports teams in the world.

“We are the largest e-sports organization in the world,” emphasized Valks. “Gaming is now a huge business – a billion-dollar industry. And esports is just the tip of the iceberg. People come to the stadiums in their thousands, just like traditional sports. And in this area we are the best team in the world.”

Before Team Liquid worked with SAP, the team relied on spreadsheets and manual analysis.

“Back then, we did everything in Excel and looked through the data manually. That turned out to be impractical,” explained Valks. In 2018, the team started working with the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). The advantage: There is a direct connection to the publishers of the e-sports games League of Legends and Dota via application interfaces. This enables data analysts to create dashboards and evaluate the data much more quickly and in a more targeted manner.

The effect was immediately noticeable: “Before working with SAP, we had four or five data analysts for every game. If a tool does this work for us, we can concentrate on the really important data questions – that takes us a lot further. And I would say that in the last year, AI has made another big leap.”

E-Sports: AI solution Joule delivers data faster

E-Sports: AI solution Joule analyzes data faster

Now Team Liquid is taking the next step with SAP and using Joule to filter data and make decisions even faster.

“Joule has access to our database. You just ask, ‘Which hero played best against this team in the last six months?' And you get an answer that’s right,” explained Valks. “This is a real game changer for us.”

Looking forward, Team Liquid plans to make Joule available across the organization. “If we make Joule accessible to everyone, their gameplay will be truly innovative,” Valks added. “And that should certainly worry our competitors.”

Matt Dillman is a senior videographer at SAP.