From Gut Feel to Growth Engine: How EnskAI is Professionalizing Football Agencies with Hudl Wyscout Data

For decades, football agencies have operated on instinct and personal contacts. Bursts of frantic action followed by radio silence. Player lists scattered across WhatsApp conversations. Deals made – or missed – based on who remembered what, when.

It’s a pervasive model that has survived, but not always thrived.

As more capital flows into the game and the industry professionalises at pace, many agencies face a stark choice: evolve into organised, forward-thinking businesses – or risk getting left behind.

It's a challenge that extends well beyond player representation. Any consultancy built on sports data faces the same inflection point.

EnskAI: Building the Operating System for Modern Agencies

EnskAI has spent the last seven years building the infrastructure to make that evolution possible. And at the foundation of everything they do sits Hudl Wyscout data.

Based in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia, what began as a project focused on data scouting has now matured into a comprehensive CRM and AI platform built specifically for football agencies — used by more than 100 agencies across 30+ countries, collectively representing over 4 billion euros in player market value.

"Agencies for many years have been highly relationship-driven organisations, based on individual gut feeling, memory, waves of activity followed by waves of inactivity, fragmented tools, silos," explains Daniel Strahinov, founder of EnskAI. "What we decided to build is this infrastructure, this basis which allows agencies to professionalise, to be structured, to be proactive, to be data-driven, to have scalable operations.”

EnskAI's mission is simple: be the operational backbone that turns agencies into real businesses. On a practical level, that means helping agencies sign players, manage players, and sell players — the three core activities that drive revenue. But the real work is about embedding structure, memory, and intelligence into an industry that has historically run on neither.

"We want to be their companion in their working life," Strahinov adds. “It’s important for us to be a daily tool, not just something agencies check during transfer windows. So, Hudl Wyscout was the natural partner for this.”

From Academic Insights to Actionable Decisions

One of the clearest examples of data translating into business outcomes is EnskAI's supply-and-demand matching system.

Many agencies operate dual business models. They represent their own players exclusively, but they also act as intermediaries — brokering deals for players represented by other agencies, particularly in markets where those agencies lack connections.

The scale of information is staggering. "A midsized or even small agency can get maybe 100, 200 names per window from partners saying, 'Hey, take a look at this guy who could be good for your market,'" Strahinov explains. "How do you manage this information? This is information overload."

It's not just the player's name. It's their current salary, asking price, contract situation, the business model with the sending agency, and a dozen other variables. Meanwhile, on the demand side, even small agencies receive hundreds of requests from clubs per window.

Traditionally, this meant chaos. But by leveraging Hudl Wyscout data, EnskAI runs algorithms that compare league levels, club levels, player profiles, age, playing time, and position fit. It's the same logic agents would apply manually, but automated and proactive.

"We proactively surface this to you and say: 'You've got this request, you've got this player — why don't you go and do it?'" Strahinov explains. "When you do this consistently, window after window, player after player, you increase the probability of making a deal and you decrease the probability of leaving money on the table."

For agents, the impact is tangible. "For our customers, speed of decisions, momentum, having all of this at your fingertips, updated daily — it just gives them the feeling that they're in control," says Strahinov. "It gives them the feeling that they run the market. It's not the market that's running them."

Deeper Datasets, Stronger Market Intelligence

EnskAI's use of Hudl Wyscout data goes well beyond live player information. The real competitive edge comes from historical depth.

"We have one rule: we want to know not just what's happening today, but what happened in the past as well," Strahinov says. "Once you build up a good history of data, you can start understanding the market."

By analysing years of player movement, performance trends, and transfer patterns, EnskAI helps agencies build profiles of clubs — understanding what types of players they typically target, which age groups they prioritise, and which markets they recruit from.

"Because we have so much historic data, we can derive patterns of what kind of markets are looking at what kind of players, what age groups — you can build profiles of clubs in terms of their preferences," Strahinov explains.

This depth of knowledge matters more than it might seem. In an industry built on relationships, first impressions are everything.

"Agents have one shot at being relevant, especially when they're speaking for the first or second time with a decision maker in a club or with another agent or with a player," Strahinov says. "For agents, these insights mean they know: if I offer this kind of player, I don't look like an idiot. That may sound simple, but it's the first step of a relationship that may last a lifetime professionally."

The world of football is small. There aren't endless decision-makers to pitch to. Get it wrong once, and that door might not open again.

"You need to make sure that you send the right signal," Strahinov adds.

Trust, Awareness, and Maintaining Momentum

When prospective clients ask EnskAI about their data — and they always do — the answer is simple.

"It's very nice to be able to say it's from Hudl Wyscout," Strahinov says. "No more questions asked afterwards. It brings credibility with our customers."

That brand recognition isn't just about reputation. It has commercial consequences.

EnskAI's sales cycles are long. Agencies don't adopt operational software lightly — they're handing over the backbone of their business. Any friction in the process can hinder progress.

"When we reach the stage of the data topic in a demo, we see that credibility helps us keep the momentum in a deal," Strahinov explains. "If I need to explain and prove that our data is reliable, this would stall an already very long decision-making process. We see that this step is very smooth when we mention the brand."

Behind the scenes, the reliability of the data is just as critical. "Asking people to fix data, to manually punch in data, doesn't make any sense," says Strahinov. "It's the 21st century — and especially in our industry, they don't do it."

For EnskAI, operational efficiency depends on trust. "I don't want to be worried every day if there's junk in, because then there's going to be junk out," Strahinov says. "The API allows us to focus on the really hard part for us — building tools that live where our customers live."

Want to explore how Hudl Wyscout data can power your business? Get in touch with our team.