The New York Jets command center core was built using Adobe AIR, Adobe Flex and Java Spring.

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By: SCOTT CACCIOLA

Before a Dec. 12 game against the Dolphins, Jets owner Woody Johnson stands in the owner’s suite at New Meadlowlands Stadium in front of his computer program that monitors in-game business.

On a recent trip to Rome, Jets owner Woody Johnson visited the Colosseum. It was neither his first visit nor his second, though he always considers the experience to be an education. As he said of the architects who designed the amphitheater two millennia ago, “They did some good stuff.”

Now that he has an ownership stake in New Meadowlands Stadium, Mr. Johnson has a vested interest in stadium planning. As he walked about the Colosseum, he found himself studying the entrances and exits, and he imagined epic bottlenecks.

“You can organize people when they’re coming in,” Mr. Johnson said before a recent home game. “But when they all decide to leave after the gladiators do their job, everyone’s in a big rush. No matter how many exits or escalators, it’s always been a problem.”

Mr. Johnson considers it his job to do what the ancient Romans could not, and his goal of eliminating crowd congestion after Jets’ victories—or (gasp!) losses—is just the start. To that end, Mr. Johnson hired Roundarch, a digital design agency, to conceptualize and construct a computer system that monitors virtually every single in-game business activity at the $1.6-billion stadium.

It is known among Jets officials as Mr. Johnson’s “Command Center,” and thousands of pieces of real-time data—everything from hot dog sales to bathroom lines—are available at his fingertips on a 42-inch touchscreen display that hangs in his owner’s suite. If this all sounds Big Brother-ish, well, it is—and Mr. Johnson and his staff are unapologetic. It is all designed to enhance the fan experience, they say. And if it helps the franchise become more profitable in the process, then the Jets will have no complaints.

“You can look at every piece of information in 360 degrees,” said Thad Sheely, the Jets’ executive vice president for finance and stadium development. “You’re able to see what’s happening as it happens.”

The program’s home screen is called “The Pocket,” and it has a four-panel layout that highlights separate categories: tickets, parking, merchandise and concessions. Tap on “Tickets,” and Mr. Johnson can see how many fans have entered the stadium, when they entered and which gates they used. Tap on “Concessions,” and Mr. Johnson can see gross sales and how that figure compares to previous games. Every ticket and parking pass is barcoded and scanned; every beer sale, processed and recorded. All that information is instantaneously uploaded to the Command Center.

It bears more than a vague resemblance to a video game, with its bold graphics and vivid colors, and Mr. Johnson was asked if he sometimes has fun just fiddling around with it. “Oh, totally,” he said.

He often extols the virtues of simplicity to his staff: If you can’t explain something in very basic terms, then you must not understand it well enough. So he asked Roundarch, which has offices in New York and Chicago, to create a system that was painless to operate and produced information that was easy to understand. By his own admission, Mr. Johnson is no tech geek. But also appears to be progressive.

“If you look at older stadiums and venues, these things were not run as well as traditional businesses,” said Geoff Cubitt, president and CTO of Roundarch. “But Woody is clearly a business guy, and he’s looking at it differently. He’s looking at it as the CEO of an organization.”

While the system operates on a macro level, Mr. Johnson—and the other executives and merchandisers who have access to it—can analyze metrics on a micro scale. The Command Center features a map of the stadium with icons that represent the exact locations of all 941 concession and merchandise outlets. Tap on any of them, and a cornucopia of data spills forth in surprisingly digestible form.

Say Mr. Johnson wants to monitor one of the merchandise booths up near Section 345. He can see gross sales for the afternoon, or for the past 10 minutes, or for a 15-minute period two hours ago—all thanks to a scrolling timeline. He can get an update on sales of merchandise subsets, such as jerseys, women’s apparel or hats. Then he can check out subsets of those subsets: How are Mark Sanchez jerseys selling at that booth? How does that total compare to last week’s game? To other booths on the same concourse? Are they running out of No. 6 jerseys? (Which, believe it or not, can happen if Mr. Sanchez is having a strong game.)

With that in mind, Roundarch has implemented an automated system that tracks inventory and sends alerts if any booths need to be restocked. Mr. Johnson also has access to live feeds of hundreds of security cameras, and the stadium is heat-mapped to monitor crowd flow. The whole idea is to take the guesswork out of game-day operations and reduce it to a futuristic science. “You can reduce lines and areas of congestion by re-routing people,” said David Vanslette, vice president of Roundarch. “And honestly, this is just the beginning. We’ll be able to tailor the experience for fans in ways that weren’t possible before.”

The idea for the Command Center was hatched in June, and Roundarch sliced the process into four stages. The first essentially entailed launching the system, which was completed before the start of the regular season. The Jets are now in the second stage, part of which involves making improvements based on the data the system collects.

The Jets already have made a couple of pregame modifications. First, Mr. Johnson said, opening the gates three hours prior to kickoff proved to be too early. Fans, he said, are more interested in tailgating than milling about inside the stadium, and the Jets were wasting resources—and money—by staffing concession stands for an extra hour. So now the gates open two hours before kickoff.

But Mr. Johnson and his staff still want fans inside the stadium before kickoff, and he found there was only a slow trickle before the Jets were host to the Cincinnati Bengals on Nov. 25. So to provide some incentive before they played the Miami Dolphins on Dec. 12, the Jets announced a 25% discount on food and non-alcoholic beverages for the first hour. Sales increased by 50% during that hour—fans came through the turnstiles at a brisk rate of 400 per minute—and were up 20% overall compared to the team’s previous two home games.

“Without the program, we wouldn’t have been able to track that,” Mr. Sheely said.

The final two stages of the process seem to excite Mr. Johnson the most. They revolve around what the team describes as “fan engagement,” and Roundarch is expected to unveil a mobile application next year that fans will be able to download to their hand-held devices.

Mr. Johnson said he anticipates a wide range of uses. Which bathrooms are the most empty? Are there any traffic issues near the stadium? Mr. Johnson even suggested using the app to announce beer discounts at various concession stands as a way to control crowd flow.

“I can see fans controlling the huge video boards through the app,” Mr. Johnson said. “We want that sort of interactivity. They’ll decide what they want to see, what music they want to hear. We’re even working on something where they’ll be able to predict plays, a sort of contest—although they won’t be able to call plays, at least for the moment.”

The Command Center, Mr. Johnson said, is limited only by “the imagination”—and by its inability to score touchdowns.

Write to Scott Cacciola at scott.cacciola@wsj.com.

From: WSJ.com

By: Tom Van Riper

Selling a few more cold beers or team caps may not recoup the revenue that Jets owner Woody Johnson lost out on by not selling all his PSLs, but every little bit counts.

During the Jets’ opening Monday night loss to the Baltimore Ravens, executives from Roundarch, a Chicago-based builder of web and mobile applications, showed off the new revenue-tracking device they built for Johnson and Jets brass in the company’s Meadowlands Stadium suite. It’s a 42-inch touchscreen that spits out up-to-the minute sales figures for concessions, tickets, parking, and merchandise. Call it the Woody Johnson command center.

The Jets are the first major sports team to try the Roundarch product. Company execs, hoping it will catch on, plan to demonstrate it around the NFL this season. Visiting Ravens executives were checking it out Monday night.

The application breaks everything down by category and individual item, while highlighting the best and worst performers. If Diet Pepsi is a particuarly big seller at a refreshment stand on the upper concourse, Johnson will know immediately. If a given parking lot that’s usually filled to capacity is a quarter empty today, he’ll know that too.

Traditionally, team executives wait until after game day to review stadium sales data and make adjustments for the following week. The idea behind real-time tracking is the ability to change promotions and adjust inventory on the fly to nab additional customers. If Mark Sanchez jerseys aren’t selling well at one of the team stores, Johnson can alert his merchandise manager, who could display them more prominently or, conceivably, mark down the price a little.

With thousands of potential customers walking the stadium, “the idea is to spur action between the tailgate and the seats,” said David Vanslette, a Roundarch vice president.

For Johnson and the Jets, game-day revenue tracking might prove to be a mere first step. Drilling down to individual customer behavior – who’s buying what, who’s not in his seat, who’s leaving early – yields even more valuable information. “I told him he ought to put RFID on every ticket,” said Vanslette. Tempting as that is, management isn’t yet ready to infringe on fan privacy to that degree. But in the new world of wired sports stadium, can it be far behind?

From: Blog.Forbes.com

A look inside New Meadowlands Stadium’s clubs (PDF).

New Meadowlands Stadium will feature what’s billed as revolutionary technology after Verizon and Cisco combined to provide digital video and wireless content over a network that requires 10,000 data ports and thousands of miles of cable.

The technology allows for branding, such as the stadium turning from blue to green depending on the host team. Video screens throughout the stadium range from offering food menus to in-game video to statistical information. In addition to the four high-definition video scoreboards in the stadium, there are more than 2,200 HD video displays throughout the facility.

“There’s highly interactive capabilities,” said chief technology officer Peter Brickman, who gave the example of wishing happy birthday on a video screen to a customer at a concessions stand.

“Plus, we have capabilities of tracking what’s being purchased, the popularity of how it’s selling, the popularity of our sales people. … We have ways to monitor and make sure our concession stands are working more efficiently.”

The Jets are also independently working with technology providers FanVision and Roundarch. The former offers handheld devices to fans that show video of the game from different angles. The latter provides real-time stadium data to the Jets in an effort to enhance the fan experience.

“Technology is key to the operation of this building,” Jets owner Woody Johnson said.

The technology has advanced so much, in fact, that some of it was not yet invented at the conception of the stadium. The fiber optics are now installed, though, so Verizon chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg said the only issue is keeping the software up-to-date with advancements.

Of course, the $100 million invested in stadium technology means little if the product on the field is not satisfactory.

“I’ve been in this business long enough to know that nothing enhances the fan experience more than putting a winning team on the field,” Giants owner John Mara said. “But having seen what other stadiums around the country have accomplished, we decided very early on that we wanted to be the most technologically advanced stadium in the world.”

From: NJ.com

By: Samantha Murphy, TechNewsDaily Senior Staff Writer

The National Football League is often hailed as one of the most technologically savvy sports operations in the world. To keep up with the demands of those involved in the game and those watching at home, the league will be testing a myriad of new technologies this season, from a new type of game clock that keeps the refs in the loop to its first 3-D broadcast.

The league’s tech goals this year, as in other years, are clear: boosting the fans’ experience by getting them deeper inside the game.

“The closer you can get to the game, the more you feel a part of it,” said John Chambers, chairman and chief executive of Cisco, during a recent webcast press conference. “There are many game changers on the horizon.”

NFL embraces 3-D

The NFL often gives technologies a test run during the preseason; for instance, referees’ use of TV instant replay to review calls debuted during a preseason game in the 1990s. During this preseason, the NFL launches its first 3-D broadcast Thursday, Sept. 2, when the New York Giants host the New England Patriots in the Giants’ new stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

Although this won’t be the first 3-D telecast by a professional league – Major League Baseball and the FIFA World Cup already have tested the three-dimensional waters – it marks the start of a long experiment by the NFL involving several stadiums.

The 3-D game is being carried subscribers of Verizon FiOS TV in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Viewers need a 3-D TV set, 3-D glasses and a high-definition set-top box to see the special effect.

Working with a company called 3ality Digital to power the telecast, Verizon is using two cameras attached to one rig — one camera for the left eye and one camera for the right eye — to create feeds that are beamed to a truck stationed outside the stadium and are combined to form a 3-D signal.

Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon’s chief executive officer, said the New Meadowlands Stadium, which the Giants share with the New York Jets, will be among the NFL stadiums experimenting with 3-D technology in the next few years.

“You will see a lot of 3-D at the New Meadowlands Stadium over the next two to three years – and then you will start to see it pop up more elsewhere,” Seidenberg said during a press conference.

What happens at the stadium, he said, “will impact the football viewing experience in the future.”

New game clock

The effect of new technologies will also be felt on the field. The NFL has had its eye on the Precision Time System currently used by the National Basketball Association, which allows on-field officials to control the pace of a game with the touch of a button.

Four officials — wearing battery-operated packs attached to their belts — will be able to activate or stop the clock system. They will work in concert with the game clock operator in the football stadium’s booth.

The NFL started testing out a new Precision Time System game clock during four preseason games to increase accuracy and cut back on downtime between plays.

“If we have the potential to time our games with more precision, then we will pursue all avenues, including experimenting with alternate methods to accomplish that goal,” Carl Johnson, the NFL’s vice president of officiating, told USA Today.

The NFL could roll this out league-wide in the near future, once a full evaluation of the test has been completed.

In-game video

Also debuting this season is a handheld device called FanVision that will allow fans in the stadium to watch the game as if they were back home on the couch. FanVision offers 10 video channels, including multiple camera views, out-of-market games, fan-controlled instant replays, game highlights, comprehensive game statistics, and real-time scores from around the league.

It can be used in the parking lot and inside the stadium only.

The devices — part of a venture owned by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross — are currently available for 12 teams, including the Dolphins and Jets. Fans will be charged $200 for the devices.

“This is of great interest because it gives fans access to information they wouldn’t necessarily have while at a stadium,” Thad Sheely, executive vice president of finance and stadium development for the Jets, told TechNewsDaily. “It enhances the game that much more for them.”

Team tech

The Jets also are trying out new technology in the skybox this season. Team owner Woody Johnson will be testing a touchscreen device to keep track of various game-day operations, such as which concessions and merchandise are selling fast, ticketing information and if there’s a jam in the Meadowlands parking lot.

The touchscreen “command center” — built by design agency Roundarch — is a first for an NFL team.

“Woody loves technology and wanted access to the entire stadium’s data flow in real time to oversee everything that’s happening,” Sheely said. “If each game is three hours and there’s only ten games, that gives us only 30 hours of action to get it right for our fans. We don’t want to have any lost opportunities, so having the device at our fingertips is key.”

Johnson said the new technology has the potential to revolutionize how NFL teams manage in-game operations in the future.

“The application that Roundarch is developing for us will help us to understand, analyze and then improve the experience each and every time fans come to the stadium and interact with our team,” he told TechNewsDaily.

Internet viewing access

To cater to the needs of on-the-go game viewers nationwide, DirecTV is offering its NFL Sunday Ticket package to the online world, giving non-subscribers the chance to watch out-of-market games. Those who want to watch football via a computer or smartphone can pay $350 for access to streaming video of the games and the Red Zone channel.

“In this widget-app-driven world, mobility is the name of the game,”Robert Mercer, a spokesman for DirecTV, said in a telephone interview. “Consumers are demanding more access to entertainment and information wherever they are. As broadband and mobile services continue to increase in popularity, and now with the introduction of new devices like the iPad that provide an even better mobile viewing experience, we expect that trend to continue.”

The move follows a year-long test of the service in the New York market.

“We’ll see how we do with this national launch and use that as a strategic guide for 2011 and beyond,” Mercer said.

From: TechNewsDaily