Smart Stadium Tools

Abstract

Today’s stadiums face increasing competition from home-viewing options, powered by better camera angles and multiplatform, multimedia experiences. Concurrent with these trends is the increase in computing power and near ubiquity of the smartphone. These technological developments create new opportunities to measure real-time space use. The service or product that can measure (real-time) space use is called a ‘smart tool’. There are some studies about smart tools, but these are not focussing on the integration in stadiums. This resulted in the following research question that will be addressed in this research: which smart tools can be identified in stadiums, and how can the use of these smart tools be optimized? Due to this nascent character of the research topic qualitative research is conducted, whereby literature is reviewed in combination with an exploratory case study. The case that is studied is the Johan Cruijff Arena in Amsterdam, the stadium has the ambition to be the most innovative stadium by 2020. Based on the case study, nine different smart tools are identified, whereby the main goals of the tools are to reduce costs and to support user activities. Based on the outcomes of this research it can be concluded that the integration of smart tools in stadiums are in their ‘infancy’. From these nine smart tool projects, only five were in use at the moment of the research, the other four were still under development. As a result, concrete numbers of the effects of integrating of smart tools are missing. However, the current experience of integrating smart tools in stadiums did generate some valuable insights on how the use of the tools can be optimized by linking the findings to innovations from practice. Recommendations are provided to guide stadium managers in the effective management of smart tools. Lastly, the research stresses out the importance of future research on this topic