Innovation

Since winning the Reimagine Football Challenge last year, Slinger is an established partner op the Johan Cruijff ArenA. Slinger offers visitors of our events the possibility to match with other visitors through their widget on our website to share a ride to one of our events. It is more fun, cheaper and a more sustainable choice.

The ESSMA Summit, hosted annually, is a must-attend event in the stadium industry with exclusive networking possibilities. The Johan Cruijff ArenA experts shared their knowledge and best practices in two speaker slots. Over three hundred high-profile peers and more than 30 insightful speakers shared the stage with them at the ESSMA Summit 2023 in Warsaw. The next edition of this event will be hosted in the Johan Cruijff ArenA, in January 2024. 

Since the first innovation challenge in 2019, over 700 organizations from more than 55 countries have submitted their solution in the Reimagine Football Challenge. The organizing partners, the Royal Netherlands Football Association KNVB, AFC Ajax, the Johan Cruijff ArenA and supporting partner the Eredivisie CV are happy to announce a new challenge for the best fan experience solutions.

The advisory team of Johan Cruijff ArenA has been appointed by Egis to jointly support the French Ministry of Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty to assist in the renewal procedure for the Stade de France concession.

Since 2020, the Johan Cruijff ArenA has been working with Catchphrase. Catchphrase is an innovative start-up with which we came into contact with thanks to the Reimagine Football Challenge. Since the collaboration, our competition and event organization have been effectively digitized. Therefore, we want to introduce this great partner based on a few questions asked and answered by CEO Gerwald van den Oetelaar.

Dutch Eredivisie clubs will now use the new unique measurement device to optimize and uniformize the Dutch premier league pitches. The device, called HIPSter, facilitates data-driven pitch maintenance and makes it easy for greenkeepers to gather and visualize data on their pitch. The HIPSter was developed by Holland Innovative, a long-term innovation partner, and was tested at the Johan Cruijff ArenA.

As part of the Football Innovation Platform, a knowledge session was hosted by the Football Association of England (FA) at Wembley Stadium. Delegates of the Johan Cruijff ArenA, UEFA, Ajax, KNVB, and Tottenham Hotspur FC came together to share their vision on the case of 'fan experience' with three bigger themes: fan connection, stadium experience, and fan strategy.

At the beginning of February, Sander van Stiphout was invited to share the sustainability journey and the learnings of that journey of the ArenA in the European Union Expert Group Green Sports. Member states and sports federations such as FIFA and UEFA were also represented at this event.

On November 16, UEFA released the UEFA Sustainable Infrastructure Guidelines. A document to help make the European football infrastructure more sustainable and share best practices for new generations. The Johan Cruijff ArenA played an important role in the creation and realisation of the publication. Together with the UEFA and other prominent stadiums, the ArenA took part in the main panel discussion.