Kickoff is 4 days away, and Costa Kladianos is getting ready as if he had been San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy on the point of face the Detroit Lions in Sunday’s NFC Championship sport.
Before almost 72,000 followers stream into Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. — a soccer’s throw from the guts of Silicon Valley — Kladianos is maintaining a detailed eye on parking, ticketing, meals and drinks, safety and merchandise gross sales.
“It may sound like a cliché, but I look at every game as a Super Bowl and [at] what we can do better,” Kladianos, who’s the chief vp and head of know-how for the San Francisco 49ers, mentioned in an interview. “It’s all about streamlining operations. This is our biggest game of the year.”
As the know-how quarterback for the 49ers group, Kladianos is tasked with parsing information in actual time, and he’s leaning on an all-star forged of tech giants — amongst them SAP
SAP,
Intel
INTC,
and Cisco Systems
CSCO,
— to verify issues run easily. “We hope to set records in food, beverage and merch sales,” he mentioned.
Priority No. 1 is “getting people through the gates,” he mentioned, with the assistance of apps like WaitTime that use high-definition cameras to estimate how lengthy it should take followers to enter the stadium.
At the middle of operations is SAP Executive Huddle, a one-of-a-kind operation for a North American skilled sports activities crew. Built on information collected by SAP’s analytics cloud, it’s housed in a set at Levi’s resembling an air-traffic-control room, stocked with drinks and diverse snacks.
Another app, appropriately referred to as HappyOrNot, collects real-time suggestions from followers about concession stands, restrooms and different areas. Should a bother spot pop up, stadium staff are deployed to rectify the scenario.
Also learn: Detroit and its soccer crew have lengthy struggled. Could town be just like the Lions and roar once more?
“It’s about providing feedback in the moment,” Navin Prasad, vp of Bahwan CyberTek, mentioned in an interview. The firm’s DropThought app measures information in actual time on parking, crowd circulate, meals and the state of suites throughout video games at Levi’s Stadium and at Jacksonville’s EverBank Stadium.
The Jacksonville Jaguars are additionally utilizing DropThought to gauge the feelings of roughly 4,000 staffers on Sundays with the purpose of bettering their efficiency, in keeping with Kelsey Holmgaard, senior supervisor of visitor expertise for the Jaguars.
As the 49ers refine their tech operations, they’re taking copious notes: Levi’s Stadium will host Super Bowl LX in 2026.
“Before all these apps, data was accumulated through an eye test and word of mouth,” Kladianos mentioned. “A lot has changed.”
Related: NFL star Brock Purdy made $870,000 this season — 16 faculty soccer gamers made extra from NIL
From the archives (January 2020): San Francisco 49ers hope to attain large with digital dashboard of fan information