Innovation

European football organizations, including the KNVB, the Johan Cruijff ArenA, City Football Group, and AFC Ajax, with the support of UEFA, have joined forces again to tackle joint challenges in the football industry. For the current challenge, the organizations aim to improve sports performance in both grassroots and professional football.

At this years Soccerex Americas, Holland Innovative and Johan Cruijff ArenA proudly introduced their state-of-the-art pitch measuring system. Developed according to FIFA requirements, the unique measuring equipment HiPSter and smart dashboard was first tested and successfully implemented at the ArenA.

Since 2018, the Municipality of Amsterdam, the Johan Cruijff ArenA and KPN have been working together in the 5G Fieldlab Amsterdam to test how 5G could benefit the residents of Amsterdam, event visitors and consumers. Various pilots in and around the ArenA are being used to examine how 5G can help to improve the safety, convenience and experience of inhabitants and visitors. From 5G-based crowd control to AR gaming at events.

Mycrocast has been chosen as a winner by the Johan Cruijff ArenA and the KNVB. Their audio solution allows all fans to be included parallel inside and outside the stadium without delay. We talked to Marcel Hesse, founder of Mycrocast, about his participation and becoming a winner of the Reimagine Football Challenge.

Leading international football organizations, including the Royal Netherlands Football Association (KNVB), Johan Cruijff ArenA, City Football Group, UEFA, and AFC Ajax have teamed up to create the Football Innovation Platform, a body that looks for innovative solutions to important challenges facing the sports industry.

In December 2021, UEFA launched their Sustainability Strategy 2030 with the main goal to inspire, activate and accelerate collective action to respect human rights and the environment within the context of European Football. Eliott Castille, Innovation Specialist at UEFA, talked us through their renewed ambitions.

City Football Group, one of the organizing partners of the Reimagine Football innovation programme, has continued working with their selected solutions. One of them is a collaboration between Fynch Mobility and Social Brothers, who submitted one of the winning solutions in the ‘Go Green’ category. Their solution analyses how fans travel to football matches and encourages greener transporting options through implementing rewards by engaging with the fans and exciting them into making more sustainable choices. We talked to Pete Bradshaw, Sustainability Director of City Football Group, about this newest innovation.

Expert, proactive, hospitable and innovative. That is CSU, the partner in cleaning and affiliated markets for business-to-business in the Netherlands. Entrepreneurship has been the 'green' engine behind our company for more than half a century. Cleaning is more important than ever, hygiene is decisive. Never before have customers relied so emphatically on a safe, efficient and sustainable implementation. New questions demanded new answers. We continue to move smoothly and quickly and we proactively offer solutions that enable customers to achieve their objectives. Together with our employees, always close to the customer.

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