Stadiums are not anymore the place where you go just to watch your favourite sport match. Instead, new Smart Stadiums can provide you with a complete experience around the sport event, which even starts well before you arrive to the stadium, and continues when you are back at home. Stadium operators are perfectly aware of the direct and indirect benefits that they can get through the provision of those added value services that enhance the fan experience.

However, stadiums are large and complex infrastructures with a very specific characteristic; typically they are intensively used for relatively short periods of time, while they remain quite inactive for the rest of the time. This means that all resources (human, services, technologies…) must be dimensioned to work smoothly and generate business during those peak times, while they do not generate unnecessary costs during the (long) inactivity periods. This situation creates challenges both at business and technological levels, such as:

• Revenues are today essentially coming from ticket sales, and will need to be complemented with sales of other added value services
• Stadium operators need a better knowledge of visitors profile and to be in full control of everything that is happening at their stadium
• Broadband wireless connectivity for a very large number of people concentrated in a reduced space
• Indoor geo-location services, also in spaces with high concentration of people and objects to be tracked
• Decoupled infrastructure for multi-tenant applications over the same infrastructure

The Smart Stadium solution takes advantage of symbIoTe IoT interoperability capabilities in order to provide services which support stadium visitors at any time by linking digital and physical worlds in a unique experience. Thanks to these added value services:

• Visitors have an enhanced full experience
• Managers easily take control of infrastructure and service providers