AI adoption in Moroccan sports organizations: Qualitative study

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly introduced into sports organizations to support management, performance analysis, and decision-making processes. Most existing studies focus on the benefits and the outcomes of AI use in sports organizations, while the barriers of AI adoption remain underexplored. Addressing this gap constitutes the primary objective of the present study, by exploring the principal challenges that limit the adoption of AI within Moroccan sports organizations. Therefore, the qualitative methodology used consisted of semi-structured interviews with fourteen managers/directors of various sports organizations in Morocco. Our analysis includes four themes: perception & adoption of AI, challenges to adopting AI, and intention to use AI in the future. The findings reveal that, while the importance of AI is acknowledged in altering the sports sector, no sports organization currently attends to using AI. Also, only seven of the fourteen participants stated they planned to adopt AI in the future. The challenges identified to the adoption of AI were : financial limitations, technical aspects of implementation, ethical challenges, and organizational resistance. The findings of the study provide contributions to institutions, researchers, and policymakers as a collaborative effort to improve adoption of AI in Moroccan sports organizations.