pronounce As Maurice Sonneveld, the recommendation that the 25. July 2025 ever you want, there are among his hearers scattered laughs. It goes to the 25. July 2025, for the Berlin football team Hertha BSC has planned the opening of its new stadium. In the capital, a construction project on time is completed, of course, is a good joke and listening to some similar brain gespinstig as what has Sonneveld, head of Digital media at Hertha, reported this week at the sports business Congress “the Spobis” about the experience of visit to the stadium in the digital age.

The User will receive a course recommendation

For the traditionalists belong to a stadium for the beer and Bratwurst. The changes gradually. Becoming more and more important, the Smartphone, especially for the so-called Generation Z – people born between 1994 and 2010, and their whole life is already digitized. Such people must be targeted and addressed, wooed. Hertha is not therefore offer a messenger service that only sends an automatic message, when the Berlin games in the Olympic stadium, but the User is also equal to a space recommendation, “because of its purchasing power, which is known to us”, says Sonneveld. “Data is the key.”

The Generation Z works differently

The Generation Z works differently, has different priorities, and other heroes. The athlete with the highest interaction on social media is not a sportsman in the classic sense; it is the E-sports Ninja who leads with 150 million interactions per month, the table in front of Ronaldo and Messi. According to a (controversial) study by Microsoft, the attention span of a human is eight seconds – and is thus, supposedly, under that of a gold fish. A game of football (excluding injury time) but it takes 675 times eight seconds. So how do you get the Generation Z into the stadium? “Only if you can’t find in the stadium, the more value you have at home on the Sofa”, says Sonneveld.

Ulrich Wolter, the stadium Manager, lawn ball sport Leipzig, reported in “the Spobis” that in the business more often, parents place is now called, to bring their children to the game, but before that, need to know whether the children are able to gamble while playing the game online, on your phone: “can not play all the time, because otherwise you will lose your Status.”

The stadium infrastructure in Germany is generally considered to be exemplary, in terms of digitisation, but substantial pent-up demand. The Arena in Frankfurt am Main, was built (like many others) for the world Cup in 2006. Alone for the requirements of the digitization of the investment requirement is currently 30 million euros. Throughout the stadium there are just 50 TV screens, where viewers can also watch the game, if you have to wait at the sausage stand, or on the way to the toilet. In the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, the site of the Super Bowl, there are 5000 screens.

“Entertainment Event with sports interruption,”

Much of what is in the United States has long been the Standard, it would be in Germany, a break with the prevailing sport culture and would not work probably. Maurice Sonneveld has looked at in America, various sports events, the basketball players of Orlando Magic, he had the feeling of being in an “Entertainment Event Sports break”. At some point he asked: “How is it, actually?”

More about

building plans in the Olympic Park, Hertha must wait longer for new stadium

Ulrich Zawatka-Gerlach

At Eintracht Frankfurt will be testing soon, is whether the Fans can order by phone your beer to the place. Sounds decadent; however, if you know that football fans have a panic fear, to miss the decisive goal for your team, because you get just beer, you see it differently. At Hertha, such an idea fails that there is at the Olympic stadium because of structural conditions, there is no W-Lan network. This will be in the new stadium, the 25. July 2025 will be opened, of course, be different.