29/02/2012

IBM & Dolphins Link On Sun Life Stadium Smart City

IBM and the Miami Dolphins are collaborating to integrate analytics technology into Sun Life Stadium in order to provide fans with an enhanced in-stadium experience.

 

In tandem with the Flagship Solutions Group, Sun Life Stadium will be connected to IBM’s Intelligent Operations Center (IOC), which comes from its ‘Smarter Cities’ programme, to create real time unified fan services.

 

Supported on the IBM SmartCloud, the project’s objective is to enhance the fan experience at the stadium for sports, music and other events.

 

The alliance enables stadium organisers to gain live insight into all stadium operations – from visitor traffic, and fan spending preferences, to weather patterns and social media sentiment. This will enable the officials to predict, adjust and fine tune services and operations as live.

 

In addition to being the home of the Miami Dolphins NFL franchise, Sun Life Stadium also hosts a variety of other sports games, entertainment and music shows, as well as business events. It boasts millions of visitor per year, 1.5 million square feet of space, 24,000 parking spaces and 75,000.

 

The partnership means staff can manage visitor traffic, handle crowd control and flow, monitor inclement weather and analyze visitor spending habits on concessions, merchandise and dining services to enhance the stadium’s offerings and personalise and optimise services.

 

‘Our challenge is to continue to make it exciting for people to come to our stadium as we compete with a constantly morphing entertainment industry that is increasingly interactive,’ said Tery Howard, Chief Technology Officer, Miami Dolphins.

 

‘This collaboration with IBM will provide analytics capabilities to collect insight into massive amounts of data we generate every second to look through the eyes of the fan and develop unmatched services to create meaningful experiences for our visitors.’

 

‘Stadiums such as Sun Life are microcosms, akin to cities, with similar requirements for services such as water, energy, transportation, communication and public safety,’ said Gerry Mooney, GM, IBM Smarter Cities.

 

‘IBM is working around the world to make stadiums smarter by infusing intelligent automation that senses and acts to improve conditions including rerouting traffic, predicting overflows, ensuring public safety and preventing outages.’

 

Comment:

 

We wouldn’t mind being personally targeted with appropriate services and products while watching a game, and we’d welcome any system that avoids queuing at food stalls or gate entrances.

 

But most of all, we’d just like enough network capacity and broadband width in stadiums so we can make calls and use social media on our smart[phones during matches.

 

Links:

 

Collaboration Video

 

www.miamidolphins.com

 

www.ibm.com/smartercities

 

www.ibm.com

 

www.sunlifestadium.com



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