Jake's Road Report is Gemini Sports founder Jake Schuster’s weekly update from professional football's frontlines. He travels globally, meeting club executives to share candid insights on AI's role in football. These raw, actionable thoughts are delivered weekly, with meeting details kept confidential and specific intel omitted.
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In the U.S., we have a phrase: “Just one more lane.”
This refers to the belief that traffic in a city will be reduced by adding one more lane to the road, one more path through which cars can flow. City planners have tried this method for decades.
It has yet to work.
What’s been demonstrated quite clearly is governments that allocate funds to public transportation rather than roads actually do reduce traffic. When citizens can get around a busy metro area without needing a car, traffic caused by cars decreases.
Don't get me wrong—cars obviously serve a purpose. They help you go on great adventures outside the city, into the deep reaches of the countryside. They come in handy when you need to transport a large group. On some level, they're even good for showing off.
In many ways, it’s a lot like the front office of a football club.
Engineers are terrific. They’re extremely valuable for research and building specific assets to give you competitive advantages nobody else has.
However, I keep hearing about project after project where clubs claimed their fabled “in-house app” would be complete after they hired “just one more engineer.”
What started as a six-month project for two people became a two-year project for six people. The goalposts keep moving. The timeline keeps extending. The budget keeps growing. And somehow, the app still isn’t finished.
Where does it end?
The clubs that figure this out fastest realize they have two options: work with a partner and use an off-the-shelf yet customizable application, deploying their engineers in an affordable and scalable manner on the problems that actually matter. Or keep adding lanes (ahem… engineers) and hoping the next one finally solves their traffic problem.
Just one more engineer. Just one more lane. Just six more months.
The pattern is always the same. And it never works.
