The Brainport Experience Box is a special part of the grandstand in the Philips Stadium, with thirteen luxurious seats with tablets. Fans and residents from the Brainport Eindhoven region can experience home games in overdrive via an app, switching their glances between the field and tablet. Goal attempts, pass accuracy, and the effectiveness of the attacking play: it immediately appears as an overlay in the video view of the match, and each match feature is added to the tablet app. PSV is the first football club in the world to experiment with this ‘living laboratory’ during home matches.
Making technology accessible to the masses
Damian Bott, Manager Marketing & Media at PSV: “It is one of the initiatives arising from a premium partnership under the name of Brainport Eindhoven; through PSV, it wants to make the meaning of all technological innovation that takes place here more accessible to the masses, also in connection with the so important talent recruitment for regional technology companies.”
Data availability and mobile connectivity are essential to enable that enriched experience of the match present in the Brainport Experience Box. Partner Ortec is the app builder and data supplier, and VodafoneZiggo and Ericsson were responsible for the mobile connectivity. The companies collaborate with Brainport Development and High Tech Campus in the 5G Hub, an initiative where organizations receive support together with a large ecosystem in the development of socially relevant innovations in which 5G mobile network technology plays a role.
Data availability
The data availability for the Brainport Experience Box is overwhelming, thanks to the structural collaboration between PSV and Ortec. Ruud van der Knaap, who oversees all sports accounts at this Dutch global data player: “We combine our data in all kinds of sectors with data from various suppliers and process and analyze these data flows based on logic we developed ourselves. This results in objective data for our end users. It is important to show the right data at the right time. We enter all football actions: where on the field, with which leg, at what time, and so on. Clients use these insights for player scouting, match analysis, and player analysis and development, among other things. What is unique is that PSV now also shares all kinds of real-time data with its audience in the stadium during matches.”
The viewer determines what he sees
The first version of the app that Ortec developed for PSV, the Brainport Experience Box already offers spectators plenty of extra experience: they see instant replays of important moments through a link with the live control car of the broadcasting agent (ESPN); they can also pre-select widgets with data information and follow this data live, for example, the percentage of duels won by a favorite player. Van der Knaap: “We develop widgets with even more relevant data around that. Think, for example, of the number of passes made in the last thirty meters towards the adversary goal, and the players who are most often involved in that final phase of the build-up.”
Towards an increasingly better competition app
In a second phase, PSV and Ortec will process insights from students of Fontys University of Applied Sciences in 2022. Damian Bott (PSV): “One group of students is investigating what kind of data supporters prefer to see on the screen during matches. The other group focuses on design: how can data streams from different suppliers be attractively brought together within one dashboard in the app, so that spectators can use the app very intuitively during the competition?”
A challenge for the Brainport Experience Box is certainly the connectivity: how do the thirteen selected spectators get the match images and data overlays optimally on their tablet screen in a stadium with thousands of active smartphone users? Bott: “WiFi is not a stable solution in a full stadium for an adequate display of data-intensive content on mobile media. But we knew that new developments in mobile connectivity and 5G could help us deliver that enriched match experience for our fans.”
Network slicing crucial for optimal connectivity
Gilian Colsen is involved in the Brainport Experience Box on behalf of the 5G Hub from VodafoneZiggo as a technical architect. “In the autumn of 2021, we did a first test in a half-full stadium, with around 20,000 spectators. We noticed that the experience for the tablet users was not optimal; these thirteen people were part of the larger whole that used the same mobile network in the stadium. As a result, too much data had to be squeezed through one line, so that users ‘went out of sight’: they received images on the tablet of situations that had occurred minutes earlier.”
The new ‘network slicing’ technique solves this: “VodafoneZiggo provides mobile connectivity throughout the Philips Stadium, but with regard to the antenna aimed at the Brainport Experience Box, we said: everyone can use that piece of radio network, but we guarantee through a number of technical measures that a maximum of 50% of that bandwidth is available for the tablets in the Brainport Experience Box. Thanks to that guaranteed bandwidth, the content experience did indeed reach the desired level. At the same time, the other users in the stadium still had such good mobile internet that they were not affected by the reduced mobile bandwidth that was left for them.”
A lot more beautiful things for the entertainment sector ahead
In a subsequent test, it will be determined whether network slicing also functions well in a full Philips Stadium and whether in that situation the other users are not affected by this in their mobile media use. For the 5G Hub, this project at PSV is extremely instructive and valuable, Colsen concludes: “An end-to-end test in a full stadium, in combination with the operation of the Ortec app, is the next step for us to understand: what else can we develop for the entertainment sector with our mobile network and 5G network slicing technology?”
Damian Bott (PSV) is satisfied with the rapid progress regarding the Brainport Experience Box. He is already thinking about the next steps: “Thanks to the higher internet speed of 5G and network slicing, we can also develop solutions in the field of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality with our partners, which require much more data and therefore require more bandwidth. Think, for example, of watching matches in real-time from the point of view of different supporters – with VR glasses, where you can easily switch seats and thus experience the atmosphere from multiple angles, and that from your own living room. We can work with rights holders like ESPN to find out what we can do in the broadcasting field when we have this solution available.”
