The Dawn of a New Era for Sports and Entertainment Venues

By Nick Treder, Director, Sports & Entertainment, Johnson Controls
Nick Treder, Director, Sports & Entertainment, Johnson ControlsWe all know that the COVID-19 pandemic has permanently changed how sports and entertainment events occur. In 2020, we witnessed the NBA bubble, watched the NFL play to empty stadiums, and suffered through postponements of Premier League matches as they addressed infections among players.

This recalibration presented a whole new set of challenges, including local regulations that change based on fluctuating COVID-19 test numbers, data overload, and a lack of interconnectivity. Fortunately, over the last decade, venues have shown an increased interest in the implementation of innovative digital technology to foster enhanced security and fan experience, along with operational and energy efficiency. The good news is that for many venues the infrastructure is already there to support the necessary technologies needed to ensure a safe and comfortable return to 100% capacity.

We get asked all the time to help stadiums and arenas envision the way forward to a healthy, touchless, safe and secure facility for fans. Our formula for success has always been rooted in a marriage between the venue’s operational and informational technology. Specifically, the most in-demand solutions come from our OpenBlue Healthy Buildings suite of solutions that support indoor air quality, social distance monitoring, contact tracing, elevated skin temperature scanning, touchless access control including biometrics, compliance and reporting management, and more.

Connected venue technologies to support healthy people, healthy places, and a healthy planet
Digital technology is helping us unlock unprecedented opportunities for fan engagement through immersive technologies like augmented and virtual reality. It also allows us to gather fan data to tailor experiences that delight fans and create new revenue streams. Digital technologies and analytical capabilities like AI can also make buildings more integrated, adaptive, proactive and self-learning. Bringing together traditional operational technology, IT systems and cloud applications infused with AI, along with cutting-edge technology such as OpenBlue Digital Twin, we are able to gain unprecedented insight, integration and collaboration to power the return of fans.

A venue digital twin enables 3D visual analysis by leveraging data in and around the building structure, plus location, assets, people, as well as past, present and future events related to the building and the environment. OpenBlue Digital Twin allows for crowd modeling, arrival and departure analysis, "what if" scenario modeling for planned events, foot traffic heat mapping for disinfection, along with unplanned incident response events. Beyond that, OpenBlue Digital Twin captures behavioral and operational data on the environment to help improve analysis, reporting and decision-making on the overall experience, performance, and connected landscapes. These simulations allow end users, venue management and other stakeholders to test and validate their plans around safety, utilization, disinfection, guidance, cost control and communications.

We are also seeing the adoption of digital technology to enable remote monitoring and management of security, life safety, mechanical, electrical and control systems. Technologies like our OpenBlue Central Utility Plant can also provide remote energy efficiency analysis. On top of that, digital solutions allow us to reliably operate facilities and minimize downtime with reduced staffing.

Finally, with a goal of creating venues and entertainment districts that can safely host guests today and tomorrow, we need to be prepared to create environments that are flexible and resilient, able to respond to urgent situations, and switch into different modes to address various critical scenarios. In the last year, in addition to the pandemic, our world has been rocked by social justice movements as well as natural disasters like wildfires and hurricanes – all events that significantly challenge the status quo of operations. We need to be sure facilities can switch into modes that address building management access, air flow, elevator movement, door locks, lighting, open collaboration, food distribution, as well as other environmental and safety settings.

The importance of health today cannot be overstated: We need to pave the way forward to ensure venues are protecting the health and safety of people, making investments for building health and efficiency, and fostering a healthy planet and community. Whether planning for new construction or retrofitting an existing structure, venues are setting the bar higher for fan experience, safety and comfort.