FORGE Sports helps soccer clubs run their game film and rosters. Many of the players are children, so we keep the use of artificial intelligence (AI) small, visible and under a coach's control. This page explains exactly where FORGE uses AI, what data it sees, and what we do to protect players' information. It adds to our Privacy Policy, which still applies in full.
1. The short version
- FORGE uses AI in one place: reading a team roster from a screenshot a coach chooses to upload.
- AI never watches game film, rates or evaluates players, recognises faces, or makes any decision about a child.
- Nothing the AI reads is saved until a coach checks it and presses Confirm.
- FORGE does not store the screenshot. It is used once, to read the roster, and then discarded.
- Only club staff (coaches and club administrators) sign in. Players and parents do not have accounts.
- We never sell players' data or use it for advertising.
2. Where we use AI: reading a roster screenshot
When a coach builds a team roster, they can type it, paste it, or upload a screenshot of an existing roster (for example, from a club registration system). For a screenshot:
- The coach's browser shrinks the image and converts it to a standard JPEG on their own computer.
- FORGE checks that the coach is allowed to edit that team's roster. If not, nothing is sent.
- The image is sent to Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, PBC, with one instruction: report each player's jersey number, first name, last name, position and birth year.
- Claude's answer fills an editable review table in the coach's browser. Rows the AI is unsure about are highlighted for the coach to check.
- The coach corrects anything that is wrong and presses Confirm to save, or Cancel to discard everything.
2.1 What the AI sees and returns
| Item | What happens |
|---|
| The screenshot | Sent to Anthropic for this one request. FORGE does not save it, write it to logs, or keep a copy. |
| What we ask for | Jersey number, first name, last name, position and birth year. Nothing else is requested or saved. |
| What we save | Only the rows a coach reviews and confirms: number, first and last name, position, birth year (if shown), and an optional note. |
| Our records of the request | We log that a roster was read (which team, how many rows, which AI model). We do not log any player's name or the image. |
2.2 Ask coaches to crop the screenshot
Roster screenshots from registration systems often include parents' email addresses, phone numbers or players' photos. FORGE only asks the AI for numbers, names, positions and birth years, and never saves anything else. But the whole image is sent for reading, so we ask coaches to crop screenshots to the No., Name, Position and birth year columns before uploading. The upload screen reminds them.
2.3 How Anthropic handles the image
Anthropic processes the image as our service provider, under its commercial terms for business customers. Under those terms, Anthropic does not use our requests to train its AI models, and keeps them only for a limited period for safety and legal purposes. See Anthropic's Privacy Policy for details.
3. Where we do not use AI
- Game film. Videos are stored privately and played back to authorised staff. No AI analyses them.
- Drawings, highlights and player cut-outs in Film Session are created by the coach with standard image tools that run on the coach's own computer. No AI, and nothing is sent anywhere to do it.
- Player evaluation. FORGE does not use AI to rate, rank, grade or predict anything about a player.
- Faces. FORGE does not use face recognition of any kind.
- Decisions. No decision about a child (selection, playing time, placement or anything else) is made by AI.
4. How we protect children's data (COPPA)
FORGE is designed for club staff, not children. Our approach follows the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the FTC's COPPA Rule.
4.1 Parental permission comes first
A player is added to a FORGE roster only after the club has collected written parental permission covering their child's name and jersey number. If an organisation joins FORGE without that permission, we do not add its players' information until a parental consent process is in place for that organisation.
4.2 We collect as little as possible
- Rosters hold a jersey number, first and last name, a position and an optional note.
- An optional birth year, typed by a coach or read from a roster screenshot. It is used only to tell apart two players with the same name.
- We do not collect children's addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, photos, school or medical information for rosters.
- Children do not create accounts or sign in.
4.3 Only the right staff can see it
- Each coach sees only the clubs and teams they have been given access to. This is enforced in our database, not only in the app.
- Staff at one club cannot search for or see another club's players.
- A player who plays for two clubs can only be connected across them by someone with permission at both clubs. Changing that player's name needs permission at both clubs too.
- Records of changes to rosters store ids and counts, not players' names, and only the club's own administrators (and FORGE's support administrators) can read them.
4.4 Video is private
- Game film is stored in a private storage bucket. There is no public link to it.
- Staff watch film through links that only work for four hours and are only issued to staff with access to that team.
4.5 Security
- All data travels over encrypted connections (HTTPS).
- Data is stored with providers that encrypt it at rest.
- Secret keys are kept on our servers, never in the app or the website.
- When a coach signs out, the club data saved on that laptop for them is cleared. If a coach loses access to a team, that team's player names are removed from their laptop the next time they open a club game in Film Session.
5. Who processes the data
| Provider | What they do for FORGE |
|---|
| Anthropic, PBC | Reads roster screenshots (Claude AI), as described above. Receives only the screenshot a coach uploads. |
| Supabase, Inc. | Hosts our database and staff sign-in. |
| Cloudflare, Inc. | Stores game film privately (Cloudflare R2). |
| Netlify, Inc. | Hosts the FORGE website and app. |
Each provider handles data only to provide its service to us, under its terms for business customers.
6. Parents' rights
A parent or guardian can at any time:
- ask to see the information FORGE holds about their child,
- ask us to correct it,
- ask us to delete it, including game film, and
- withdraw permission for any further collection.
Contact us at the address below or through your club. We will confirm we have acted on your request.
7. Changes to this page
If we start using AI anywhere else in FORGE, or change how a provider handles children's data, we will update this page before the change takes effect, and obtain new parental permission where COPPA requires it.
8. Contact