Team Liquid’s Winning Formula on Show in November: How SAP and AI Are Redefining Competitive Performance
Key Takeaways
⇨ Team Liquid emphasizes the importance of building elite systems alongside player skill, leveraging AI to enhance team performance and operational efficiency.
⇨ Their success is driven by a data-first philosophy, utilizing SAP technology to revolutionize match preparation and player evaluation, resulting in significant operational savings.
⇨ Key lessons include embedding AI into existing workflows, engineering for disruption, and scaling innovation through lighthouse projects, applicable not just in esports but in traditional businesses as well.
In the high-stakes world of esports, where milliseconds can determine victory or defeat, Team Liquid has discovered that elite performance isn’t just about player skill—it’s about building elite systems. And they’re bringing that philosophy to SAP users everywhere.
Jesse Hart, Senior Director of Sports Science and Analytics at Team Liquid, will present the keynote at Mastering SAP Collaborate, an SAP TechEd on Tour event in Sydney on 12-14 November. His session, “Let’s Go Liquid: How AI Takes Esports Teams from Good to Great,” will explore how the organisation leverages agentic, multimodal systems to raise individual capability within hyper-efficient teams—finding productivity gains where traditional approaches hit capacity limits. For SAP professionals facing similar challenges of improving performance without simply adding headcount, Team Liquid’s journey offers repeatable patterns worth studying.
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With over $60 million in annual revenue and a fanbase spanning continents, Team Liquid has become more than the world’s most watched esports organisation—it’s a case study in digital transformation that captured Harvard Business School’s attention in 2023. The secret? A data-first philosophy powered by SAP technology since 2018.
From Gaming House to Global Powerhouse
Team Liquid competes across 26 different games, from League of Legends to first-person shooters, with global offices spanning the Netherlands, Brazil, the U.S., and Southeast Asia. Revenue flows from brand sponsorships, in-game merchandise, and licensing deals, but what truly distinguishes the organisation is how deeply it has embedded enterprise-grade analytics into every aspect of operations.
The turning point came with implementing SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP HANA Cloud, and SAP Analytics Cloud. These tools enabled Team Liquid to create an AI agent within SAP’s Joule copilot that revolutionised match preparation. Players and coaches can now query vast historical gameplay data in natural language, asking questions like “When was the last time I played champion X against player Y?” What previously took days of manual review now happens in seconds, resulting in $250,000 in operational savings while dramatically improving competitive readiness.
Their AI-powered Draft Bot, built with SAP AI Core, simulates competitor coach behavior during the crucial draft phase where in-game champions are selected. This innovation provides strategic advantages before gameplay even begins—the equivalent of knowing your opponent’s playbook before kickoff.
Beyond the Game: Scouting and Fan Engagement at Scale
Team Liquid’s SAP implementation extends far beyond competitive analytics. The organisation now evaluates player performance data from global game servers, identifying rising talent like their Mongolian recruit who was ranked number one on multiple servers. Simultaneously, they publish personalised content in 42 languages across 79 owned channels, reaching communities from Jakarta to São Paulo.
The MyBlue platform represents the future of fan engagement—a blockchain-integrated portal where fans earn rewards through every interaction, from watching matches to engaging with sponsors. Each touchpoint contributes to unique fan profiles that inform personalised content and reward systems, creating direct-to-fan revenue at scale. For SAP customers exploring customer data platforms and experience management, MyBlue demonstrates how real-time personalisation can deepen brand value while empowering individuals.
The Enterprise Playbook
What makes Team Liquid’s approach particularly relevant for traditional businesses is their culture of co-design and experimentation. Rather than simply deploying technology, they involve players, analysts, and marketers in building tools that reflect actual workflows. This human-centered design, paired with SAP’s adaptability, creates intuitive systems that drive adoption and impact.
The organisation is now leveraging SAP Concur Travel and Expense while exploring how SAP Business AI can transform HR functions – from multilingual legal compliance to localised marketing content. Their ultimate goal: creating digital twins of players using biometric data, eye tracking, sleep cycles, and gameplay history to optimise performance, nutrition, and strategy.
What Mastering SAP insiders Should Take Away
Team Liquid’s success offers three critical lessons.
First, embed AI where people actually work—not as separate dashboards but as assistants within existing workflows.
Second, don’t wait for disruption to find you; engineer for it by adopting capabilities that provide strategic foresight, not just operational excellence.
Third, scale innovation across the business by identifying lighthouse projects and extending them rapidly across other units.
In an experience economy where traditional KPIs must coexist with engagement velocity and sentiment ratios, Team Liquid proves that businesses operating like competitive teams—with real-time insights, cross-functional collaboration, and adaptive feedback—are built to thrive in disruption. The metaphor may be esports, but the application is universal.
Hear from Jesse in person – buy your Sydney event pass by midnight on 18 August and save $600pp.
