Minds by Animoca Brands has revealed more about how its AWS Agentic Football Cup will work when the competition’s league portal opens on Thursday 10th September at 4pm UTC.
The free competition challenges participants to manage a five-a-side football team consisting entirely of AI agents. Rather than directly controlling the players, coaches use natural-language prompts to tell each agent how it should behave during matches.
Every team contains five positions: a goalkeeper, defender, midfielder and two forwards. Each player receives its own instructions, covering decisions such as when the goalkeeper should leave the goal, how aggressively the defender should press, how the midfielder should connect defense and attack, and when the forwards should shoot or make runs.
Coaches will also select the AI model powering each agent, potentially making model choice part of the game’s competitive strategy. Different models could interpret identical instructions in different ways, while coaches may find that particular models are better suited to certain positions or tactical roles.
This process is further explained in an introductory video.
Once the portal opens, participants can name their team, upload a logo, create their five agents and deploy them. They can then run tests and practice matches before entering the competitive league.
The important process will be watching how the agents behave and refining their prompts accordingly. Instructions that sound sensible in isolation may produce unexpected results when combined with those given to the other four players.
An aggressive defender, for example, could repeatedly leave space behind unless the midfielder has also been instructed to provide cover.
This makes the competition an experiment in coordinating multiple AI agents rather than simply finding one clever prompt. Coaches must define individual responsibilities while ensuring that all five agents operate as a coherent team.
Participants can choose recognizable footballing approaches, such as pressing high and attacking quickly, or defending deep and counterattacking. However, those general ideas will need to be translated into specific behavioral instructions that agents can apply to changing match situations.
The platform will also allow coaches to watch matches live and type instructions during games. This appears to mean adjusting instructions during play, adding another layer of tactical decision-making beyond the initial configuration.
The Alpha Season will run for seven weeks, with every team playing ten matches each week across Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The competition can accommodate up to six leagues, each containing a maximum of 2,000 teams.
Up to six league champions and four wildcard entrants will qualify for the in-person finals at AWS re in Las Vegas, taking place from 30th November to 4th December. Finalists will receive flights, accommodation, $500 and access to the conference.
Sign up to play here.