KPN and Johan Cruijff Arena innovation partners for 25 years

KPN has been technology and innovation partner of the Amsterdam ArenA (later Johan Cruijff ArenA) since the stadium was built in 1996. It is the largest stadium in the Netherlands and will be the base for the national team during the forthcoming European Football Championship. In the past 25 years, KPN and the ArenA, together with various partners, including the Municipality of Amsterdam, Dutch Railways, and the Dutch police, have worked on innovative projects in which technology is used to improve the visitor experience and the safety of tens of thousands of visitors, law enforcement officers, and stadium stewards.

In 2018, KPN installed 5G in the stadium and the ArenA became the first football stadium in Europe with a 5G network. The ArenA has long been a FieldLab where people experiment to their heart’s content with new solutions and technology. The ArenA is much more than a stadium. The area around the Johan Cruijff ArenA is actually a complete city in miniature. In addition to the stadium, there are concert halls, shops, restaurants, companies, homes, and a train station, each with millions of visitors every year. Sometimes, there are multiple events in the area at the same time and up to 100,000 people present. Thanks to 5G technology, in the future, data from camera images can be used directly to get visitors to arrive at the stadium via a different route, get them to their stadium seat faster, or guide them to the train station.

To celebrate the collaboration and in the run-up to the European Championship, KPN, together with the Johan Cruijff ArenA and Dutch Railways, have developed a mini-documentary highlighting various innovative projects in and around the stadium. The documentary shows, among other things, how 5G is being tested to further improve the visitor experience in the stadium with the new opportunities that 5G offers: watching a replay of a goal at lightning speed from the stands, and paying faster thanks to a guaranteed connection with the card machine.