New partnership will help Cardiff City move from reactive to proactive online safeguarding, using real-time intelligence to identify player welfare risks while they are emerging.
Cardiff, 25th August 2026 — Cardiff City Football Club has appointed Welsh AI company Nisien as its Official Online Safeguarding Partner, introducing a new intelligence-led approach to protecting players from harmful online activity.
The partnership will see Cardiff City use Nisien’s Hero platform to detect, classify and prioritise online abuse in real time, giving the Club’s safeguarding team greater visibility of emerging risks and helping them identify where individual players may require support.
At the heart of the partnership is a simple ambition: to move online safeguarding from reactive response to proactive intervention.
Traditional approaches can leave clubs assessing online abuse after an event has taken place. Nisien’s technology is designed to provide safeguarding teams with intelligence while incidents are developing — helping them understand not simply how much harmful content exists, but its severity, nature, who is being targeted and where action may be required.
Real-time Safeguarding In Action
The approach was recently demonstrated during Cardiff City’s fixture against Wrexham, when Nisien’s Hero platform was used to provide real-time insight into harmful online activity surrounding the match. Throughout the game, the platform captured and analysed online conversations, identifying harmful content and distinguishing higher-risk activity from the wider volume of social media discussion.
For Cardiff City’s safeguarding team, this meant they did not have to wait until after the match for a retrospective assessment of what had happened online.
Instead, they were able to build an understanding in real time of where abuse was occurring, its severity and which players could potentially require additional support following the final whistle.
This provided the Club with intelligence that could inform player welfare conversations after the match and help ensure appropriate support was available ahead of the next fixture — supporting players both personally and in being best placed to perform.
Lee Gainer, CEO of Nisien, said:
“Football doesn’t have an awareness problem when it comes to online abuse. Everyone in the game knows it exists. The challenge is identifying what matters, who is being affected and where intervention may be required quickly enough to do something about it.
“That’s what makes this partnership with Cardiff City particularly exciting. We’re moving beyond monitoring and retrospective reporting towards proactive, intelligence-led safeguarding.
“Hero can identify and prioritise harmful activity while it is happening, giving safeguarding teams the information they need to understand the nature and severity of the risk and make informed decisions about player support.
“As a Welsh technology company, we’re incredibly proud to work with Cardiff City to demonstrate how AI can have a practical and positive impact on player welfare.”
Rob Cronick, Head of Safeguarding at Cardiff City FC, said:
“Having access to the platform during the Wrexham game was incredibly useful because it gave us visibility of what was happening online as the match unfolded.
“The real value wasn’t simply knowing that negative or abusive content existed. It was being able to understand where the more serious issues were, how they were developing and which players might need additional support afterwards.
“That enables us to be much more proactive. If we understand what a player has potentially been exposed to, we can ensure the right conversations and support happen quickly rather than waiting for issues to surface later.
“Player welfare and performance are closely connected. Our priority is always the welfare of our players, but providing the right support at the right time also helps put them in the best possible position personally and professionally ahead of the next game.”
Beyond Sentiment: Identifying the Risks that Matter
Nisien’s approach differs from traditional social listening and sentiment analysis by focusing on the nature and severity of harmful activity rather than simply measuring whether online conversation is positive or negative.
Hero uses AI to detect and classify different types of online harm, helping safeguarding teams distinguish potentially serious player welfare issues from the enormous volume of online conversation generated around professional sport.
Rather than requiring teams to manually interpret thousands of posts or wait for retrospective reports, Nisien aims to turn online activity into actionable safeguarding intelligence while there is still an opportunity to respond.
Building a More Proactive Model for Football
The partnership reflects Cardiff City’s wider commitment to safeguarding and player welfare and provides an opportunity for Nisien and the Club to develop a model for how real-time intelligence can support safeguarding in professional football.
Gainer added:
“We believe the next evolution of safeguarding in professional sport will be proactive and intelligence-led.
“The question isn’t whether online abuse is happening. The question is: would your organisation know quickly enough to intervene?
“Working with Cardiff City gives us an opportunity to demonstrate what becomes possible when safeguarding teams have that intelligence in real time.”
About Cardiff City Football Club
Cardiff City Football Club operates safeguarding programmes across the Club and is committed to protecting the welfare of children and adults at risk participating in its activities.
About Nisien
Nisien is a Welsh AI company developing early-warning intelligence technology for online risk. Its Hero platform uses research-backed AI to detect, classify and prioritise harmful online content in real time, helping organisations understand emerging risks and act before they escalate.
Nisien’s technology is underpinned by research in online harms, human behaviour and artificial intelligence and is designed to transform large volumes of online information into structured, actionable intelligence.
Contact the Nisien team now to discover how HERO Platform helps teams identify emerging risks earlier, prioritise genuine threats and support faster intervention.
From noise to action. From reactive monitoring to proactive safeguarding.
