Miami Dolphins Transform Sun Life Stadium Into an Entertainment Destination for Fans With IBM Solutions for Smarter Cities

ARMONK, N.Y. and MIAMI GARDENS. Fla., Feb. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced a collaboration with the Miami Dolphins to integrate analytics technology into Sun Life Stadium, enhancing the overall experience for fans of sports, music and media with IBM solutions designed for Smarter Cities.

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As a result, officials can gain real immediate insight into all stadium operations including visitor traffic, fan spending preferences and weather patterns, as well as social media sentiment, allowing them to predict and adjust accordingly based on real-time events. 

Sun Life Stadium is a premier venue that hosts a variety of entertainment, media and business events, as well as marquee sports events including the Super Bowl and Orange Bowl. With millions of visitors in over 1.5 million square feet of space, coordinating 24,000 parking spaces and over 75,000 seats can lead to logistical and management challenges for the staff. 

In collaboration with IBM business partner, Flagship Solutions Group, Sun Life Stadium is using IBM's Intelligent Operations Center (IOC) for Smarter Cities, supported on the IBM SmartCloud, to address these challenges while also engaging fans by delivering an unmatched experience at an event.  Stadium staff can now offer a unique fan experience by enabling event specialists to more effectively manage visitor traffic, monitor inclement weather and analyze visitor spending habits on concessions, merchandise and dining services to better target the fans with premium products and services.  

IBM's Intelligent Operations Center, which helps manage and view interconnected operations across a city or a stadium, is designed to drive sustainable economic growth by helping organizations deliver more innovative services that exceed their citizens or customers' expectations.

"Our challenge is to continue to make it exciting for people to come to our stadium as we compete with a constantly morphing entertainment industry that is increasingly interactive," said Tery Howard, Chief Technology Officer, Miami Dolphins, "This collaboration with IBM will provide analytics capabilities to collect insight into massive amounts of data we generate every second to look through the eyes of the fan and develop unmatched services to create meaningful experiences for our visitors." 

IBM's IOC provides Sun Life Stadium a complete interconnected view of stadium activity, from weather alerts, to real-time security, to traffic flow into the stadium creating a seamless flow of visitors attending a game, to insights into whether visitors prefer a full dining experience or buy food at concession stands prior to a big game.  

Real-time analysis also enables staff to predict consumer preferences and plan concession and merchandise needs for current or future events. For example, as concession and dining service sales contribute a significant amount of revenue for a stadium, anticipating a fan's preference for a full dining experience or purchasing food at a concession stand during an event is key to increasing business profitability.  Advanced crowd control management with geospatial intelligence and audiovisual notifications, supports security personnel to immediately shift the flow of fans to minimize crowding.

Reducing inefficiencies and cost requires smarter technologies. With embedded intelligence in the physical assets of an organization, Sun Life Stadium can create a command center to manage not only their data center and IT design, but also their physical assets to manage diverse parts of the facility.  Delivered as a cloud computing service, IBM's IOC enables better scalability and aggregates disparate back-end IT systems for a comprehensive view of the organization.

"Stadiums such as Sun Life are microcosms, akin to cities, with similar requirements for services such as water, energy, transportation, communication and public safety," said Gerry Mooney, GM, IBM Smarter Cities.  "IBM is working around the world to make stadiums smarter by infusing intelligent automation that senses and acts to improve conditions including rerouting traffic, predicting overflows, ensuring public safety and preventing outages."

Enhanced Services for Today's Socially Savvy Mobile Fans

There is a growing number of sports and entertainment-related social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter  to engage fans. IBM is enabling Sun Life Stadium to compete in this increasingly interactive and social entertainment environment to not only engage with fans locally but with fans around the world.  Sun Life Stadium is further enhancing the fan experience with new mobile applications for fans to access the latest game scores and stats, and to share images and view videos of games or other events no matter where they are.  While still at home, or on the way to the stadium, fans will be able to also receive mobile alerts about the game or an event, including travel and parking instructions, information about the football teams or entertainers and targeted promotions for a concert.

For more information on IBM Smarter Cities, please visit www.ibm.com/smartercities.

For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/smartcloud.  Follow us on Twitter at @ibmcloud.

For more information about Sun Life Stadium, visit  http://www.sunlifestadium.com/.

For more information on how Flagship Solutions Group is providing comprehensive technology business solutions to clients in the Mid Market and Enterprise space, visit: http://flagshipsg.com/.

Lizette Kodama 
IBM Media Relations 
646-675-0750

SOURCE IBM