Initiating of Player Ratings

After reviewing a player's profile in SAP Sports One, you also have the option to evaluate and rate your players using various evaluation scenarios. Regular player evaluations are a fundamental element of a club’s talent management strategy. They provide a structured basis for assessing development, identifying potential, and making informed decisions about player progression and squad planning.

To overview existing player ratings or to create new ones, navigate to the Player Ratings section within the player's profile. Here, you can filter evaluations and ratings by evaluation scenario, season or custom range, evaluator or the evaluation template used. Additionally, you have the option to download a PDF overview of all ratings.

In this unit, we will explore the various player rating scenarios in more detail.

In SAP Sports One, you can assign customized rating scales for various evaluation scenarios. This flexibility allows clubs to use tailored scales when assessing players across different types of evaluations. By doing so, clubs can manage their teams more efficiently and align the system with their own unique processes.

If you have the required permissions, you can manage the rating scales in SAP Sports One at Rating Scales in the Catalog.

As you can see in the rating systems tab, there are by default already some rating scales available. If the appropriate rating scale is not available in this list, you are able to add your own scale. In the first step, please enter a name and select the type (icons or characters) of the scale. Afterward, you can start to create the rating scale according to your own ideas and specifications. At this point, you can add grades which includes an icon or character and a short description.

Besides the grades of the scale, you can define an icon or character and a description to be used if a rating is not possible. Once you save the rating scale, you can always edit and delete it, but it will not be released to the rating scenarios. Release a rating scale to assign it to a rating scenario. Once released, you cannot edit or delete the rating scale!

As already mentioned, the rating scales can be assigned to the respective player evaluation scenarios, regardless of whether they are the default scales from the system or the ones you have individually created. An existing scale is already assigned to the rating scenarios by default.

In team management and player evaluation, various rating scenarios play a crucial role, such as talent management, training session evaluation and player skill evaluation. We will explore these scenarios in greater detail in the upcoming lessons.

However, if you have the necessary permissions, you can assign a rating scale to any scenario in SAP Sports One by navigating to the rating system assignment section in the Catalog under Rating Scales.

By clicking on the edit button (hovering over scenario), you can choose the rating scale you want to assign to the scenario. Afterward, you must convert the old rating scale to the new one. To do so, please use drag and drop to map each old grade to a new grade.

On the other side, it is also possible to assign two grades from the old scale to one grade of the new scale.

The impact of these rating scales assignments is immediately noticeable when examining the rating scenarios, such as match and training player ratings, player evaluations or player skill evaluations.

After this administrative lesson on managing the rating scales, let's explore the various evaluation and rating scenarios. First, in SAP Sports One, you have the option to add individual player ratings for matches.

The rating scale scenario used for player ratings for matches is Talent Management Evaluations.

Simply go to the specific match and navigate to the Lineup and Ratings tab. There, click on Player Ratings and Squad. In this section, you'll see a list of all the players who participated in the match. If no lineup was imported from your data provider, you can manually adjust the participants.

By clicking on Edit Participants, you can not only modify the lineup but also add a player rating for the match and leave a comment for each player. These ratings are then linked to the match, providing an overview of each player's match performance.

In SAP Sports One, player ratings are available not just for matches, but also for training sessions.

The rating scale scenario used for player ratings for training is Training Session Evaluations.

When you enter the training session and click on the Participants tab, you will see a list of all attendees. In edit mode, you can adjust the ratings for the session and leave comments as well. These ratings are linked to the training, providing an overview of each player's training session performance.

However, ratings from matches and training sessions alone are not sufficiently meaningful for effective talent management. It’s essential to gain a comprehensive understanding of each player by evaluating them across multiple categories - such as technique, tactics, mentality, and more. Within these evaluation categories, individual sub-criteria should also be considered depending on the specific use case.

For this reason, SAP Sports One allows you to carry out detailed player evaluations.

Before conducting a player evaluation, we need to take two key steps. First, we create the evaluation categories. Then, based on these categories, we set up an evaluation template. Let’s get started by creating the evaluation categories.

If you have the required permissions, you can create player evaluation categories in SAP Sports One at Catalogs by clicking on Evaluations → Evaluation Categories.

Once you are clicking on Create Category, you can give the category a name and a description. After saving, the category will appear as a top level category on the left hand side. When interacting with the created evaluation category, you have the option to edit, relocate, and delete the category. You can also add a new subcategory. This enables you to set up your individual evaluation category structure in SAP Sports One.

By clicking on a category, you can also view the evaluation templates in which it is used. A particularly powerful feature is the ability to add attachments to a category or subcategory. This allows you to store all relevant documents and resources that support the player evaluation process directly within the category. Additionally, you can use the search bar in the top left corner to quickly find existing categories.

Creating the evaluation categories could look something like this:

In the next step, we focus on creating the evaluation templates. These templates are used to assign the appropriate evaluation categories to the relevant players. In SAP Sports One, you can create a wide variety of evaluation categories depending on the focus of the evaluation - for example, differentiating by age group, playing position, or specific player characteristics. For each specialization, tailored evaluation categories can be essential to accurately assess the player's performance and potential.

If you have the required permissions, you can create the evaluation templates in SAP Sports One at Evaluation Templates in the Catalog.

To add any evaluation categories to the template, please use the drag and drop function. On the left-hand side, you have an overview of the hierarchical structure of the evaluation categories and therefore all the evaluation categories existing in the system. In SAP Sports One, you can directly add the top level categories to a template or just individual sub-categories within a top level category. Once you have added all the evaluation categories by dragging and dropping, you can also arrange and move them until the templates suit your use case.

A ready-made template could look like this:

As soon as you have saved the template, you are also able to distribute permissions when navigating via the template. Initially, the evaluation template is accessible for all users with the necessary permissions. At this point, you can individually define which persons and person groups should have access (read, write or manage) to the template.

After completing these basic administrative steps, let’s dive into the process of evaluating your players. The following video provides a step-by-step guide on how to carry out a player evaluation.

However, rating and evaluating players is not only important for internal team members, but also for external players who may be of interest for scouting and potential future signings.

Please note that this course does not cover the full scouting process in detail. Nevertheless, it briefly highlights the common steps as well as the key differences between internal player evaluations and external scouting reports.

Let’s first look at what remains the same: You use the evaluation categories and templates that you previously created in the Catalog introduced at the beginning of this lesson. Based on that, the process of creating scouting reports for a pre-selected player is also very similar to evaluating internal players - including how to initiate the evaluation from the player profile, use rating categories and subcategories, manage permissions, and so on. For that reason, we will not go into full detail on the creation process again here.

However, when creating scouting reports, you have additional options - such as distinguishing between an overall rating and a potential rating. You can also directly assign a preferred playing position to the player and specify an evaluation period instead of a single date.

Due to the additional options available in player ratings via scouting reports, this type of rating might also be suitable for your internal player evaluations. We’ll be happy to provide you with further support if needed.

If you have any further questions regarding the scouting process in SAP Sports One or the creation of scouting reports, please contact your SAP representative.

In the previous lessons, you’ve learned about the various ways to conduct player ratings in SAP Sports One - both for internal and external players. Of course, it’s not only useful to document these evaluations in SAP Sports One, but also to perform meaningful analysis based on them.

We’ll now illustrate one such analysis using the player evaluation that was created earlier. In the previous lesson, we created an evaluation template that included the TIPS categories. This template was then used for evaluating the player.

With SAP Analytics Cloud, you can now perform in-depth analysis - for example, to compare different players and evaluate the categories they were rated on. This allows you to quickly identify strengths and weaknesses, which is highly valuable for making informed decisions in the talent management process.

An example of such an analysis, comparing two players, might look like this

Of course, there may also be cases where you want to prepare a player’s evaluation in detail for a performance review or player meeting. For this purpose, you can use a reference analysis to present the TIPS rating categories - for example, in a clear and structured player evaluation sheet.

To get more information on how to access SAP Reference Content in SAP Analytics Cloud, please get in touch with your SAP contact.