Flamengo, Brazil's largest multi-sport club and one of Latin America's top universities, and PUC-Rio have partnered to develop sports technology. A national leader and a fan of programs and software that help enhance sports results, the "Esportivos Olimpíadas do Mais Querido" (The Most Beloved Olympic Sports) are now going further, not only using but also developing technology and intelligence projects in collaboration with PUC to further ensure high quality.

"The partnership with PUC-Rio aims to accelerate the technological development of Flamengo's Olympic Sports, enabling us to develop tools currently limited to top teams worldwide. We want to increasingly become a benchmark in terms of intelligence in sports, as we believe that technology will have a significant impact in future Olympic cycles. We are very pleased to have a research institution of excellence like PUC-Rio at our side," explains Delano Franco, Vice President of Olympic Sports for Flamengo.

The first joint project will focus on artificial intelligence for basketball. Currently under development, BAICA (Basketball Artificial Intelligence Coach Assistant) is a virtual coaching assistant capable of analyzing data and providing real-time information during matches.

Vice-Rector of Development at PUC-Rio, Prof. Sergio Bruni also spoke about the partnership between the university, through the TECGRAF Institute, and the club, which signed a Technical Cooperation Program that aims to develop scientific research in Sports Analysis based on data science, artificial intelligence and visualization.

"In this first phase, we will collaborate with the North American startup Sports Power AI to develop applications based on data science and artificial intelligence, and we will begin our activities in basketball. This collaboration will serve as the foundation for the implementation of the Vale da Gávea Sports Technological Innovation Hub. We are very excited about this partnership and envision a broad path of cooperation with Flamengo," explained Bruni.