Whether you want to send messages to friends with greetings from the stadium or share the next Instagram story from the football match – if you want to surf the internet in the Fröttmaninger Arena, there are a total of 1,500 WiFi access points. With these, between 10,000 and 15,000 of the 75,000 fans can use the network at the same time on a match day.
To ensure that all of these processes run smoothly, the arena is working with the technology company Cisco. The collaboration has been going on for several years and has now been sealed with an official partnership. At the start of the Bundesliga season this Friday, the technology company Cisco will be further expanding the arena’s WiFi infrastructure, according to a press release. There is talk of new applications, user experiences and business areas. What exactly this will look like remains to be seen.
The stadium’s WiFi is already being used for many different applications. For example, fans travel to the stadium in around 11,000 cars each match day. To avoid traffic jams, the entire car access is equipped with sensors that transmit their data via WiFi. This avoids long queues at the entrance. Until a few years ago, employees did this and sent their information to the control room via SMS.
The 300 turnstiles in the entrance area are also connected to the WiFi network and show how many people are entering the stadium. At peak times when the stadium opens, up to 20,000 fans arrive in the arena area at the same time. The information from the turnstiles is therefore important for controlling the deployment of staff.
Anyone who wants to buy a drink from the beer runners in the stadium can benefit from the 50 mobile cash registers that are connected to the Internet and allow payment without cash. The 400 permanently installed cash registers in the stadium also process payments via the WiFi network. During half-time, the network has to handle a particularly high number of transactions simultaneously, which amounts to 60,000 payments in 15 minutes. All of these are now cashless.
A functioning network is also important for the games themselves. This allows coaches to carry out video analysis in real time on mobile devices. In the outdoor areas, the WiFi access points and antennas must also be weatherproof. In the near future, the next generation of WiFi standard WiFi 7 will be upgraded so that even more fans can surf at the same time and at a reliable speed.
Detlev Kühne, member of the management board at Cisco Germany, and Jürgen Muth, managing director of the Fröttmaninger Arena, welcome the continued collaboration. “We have big plans for the Allianz Arena,” says Kühne. And Jürgen Muth adds that the aim of the partnership should be to further improve “the experience in the arena for the fans.”