I solved it by doing this.
Add the following to plugins.sbt
addSbtPlugin("de.johoop" % "jacoco4sbt" % "2.1.2")
In build.scala i added a new import
import de.johoop.jacoco4sbt.JacocoPlugin._
and added jacoco to the config section like this
lazy val xyz = play.Project(
"xyz",
path = file("."),
settings = Defaults.defaultSettings
jacoco.settings ++ //this is the important part.
).settings(parallelExecution in jacoco.Config := false) //not mandatory but needed in `most cases as most test can not be run in parallel`
After these steps jacoco:cover was available in the sbt and play console and also discovers our tests.