Simon van Heck

Management in the Built Environment

Smart Stadium Tools - An explorative case study of the Johan Cruijff ArenA: identification and optimisation of smart tools in stadiums

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 optimised? 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.