The worlds of technology and sport continue to blend — and it’s changing everything from the fan experience to how sports venues are managed. These days, technology can even be used to identify and address problems in a a sports venue as they unfold in real-time.
That’s the case for the San Francisco 49ers, who with a new venue management platform designed by software giant SAP find themselves able to assess and evaluate the operation of Levi’s Stadium during game days.
Forbes reports that the new management platform dubbed Executive Huddle provides 49ers personnel with data, collected in real-time, on all aspects of Levi’s Stadium operations.
Bathroom suddenly need cleaning? Concessions points-of-sales performing worse than expected? Parking lot suddenly full? Executive Huddle provides Levi’s Stadium staff with the data visualization they need to identify and address each of these problems as they’re happening.
Data collected from concessions points-of-sale, gate scans and “happy or not” survey impressions set up throughout the venue are displayed live in what Moon Javaid, vice president for strategy and analytics for the 49ers, described to Forbes as “mission control at a stadium.”
JUST IN: The @49ers & long time partner @SAP have built an Executive Huddle Room inside Levi’s Stadium serve as a war room of sorts to capture, report & respond to game day operations such as lines and satisfaction ratings for parking and concessions. pic.twitter.com/c90OiVNePv
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) October 22, 2018
SAP, a longtime 49ers partner, was already collecting data for the team across various platforms, then worked to provide all of that data in real time to the visualization platform.
“The key was tapping into various systems that had a bit of influence on fan experience and bringing together the data in real time and visualizing it in [a] five-second glance to tell if something is going good or something going wrong without having to go through mountains of data,” Mark Lehew, global vice president of sports and entertainment at SAP told Forbes. “Then you can resolve it before it became a bigger problem.”
Javaid said that the 49ers' mission control room is unique, but that may not last long. Representatives from the Los Angeles Rams have already seen Executive Huddle in action, and other teams have expressed interest. Lehew says that about 70 to 80 percent of the Executive Huddle system is plug-and-play anywhere, so it could be rolled out to other venues in the near future.
