This study explores the shift in football recruitment from traditional scouting to data-driven methods, focusing on Sweden. It investigates how football organizations can enhance competency for effective data-driven recruitment. Through qualitative interviews with elite Swedish football organizations, the study emphasizes the need for competence development for proficient data-driven recruitment. To address the enhancement of personnel competency in the recruitment process, this study poses the research question: "How can football organizations effectively promote competence development to optimize their utilization of data-driven recruitment?" The results highlight the importance of targeted education, combining expertise in data-driven recruitment with a broad skill set.

Nowadays the world of football has become more commercial than before. As a result of this the clubs' financial status is getting more and more important. Therefore the UEFA has given the national federations a specific task to make sure that the clubs from each country follow certain standards of maintaining the football credibility. The Swedish federation has decided that the Swedish clubs must follow the so-called ?elitlicensen?.