Last year, Sporting KC, the local Major League Soccer franchise in Kansas City, almost made the finals and, along the way, became "the" story in the world of U.S. soccer given the team's state-of-the-art stadium which opened mid-season. LiveStrong Park became the standard for soccer-specific stadia in the U.S.
No less than Fast Company magazine has noticed. LiveStrong Park is featured in the March issue of the magazine given the digital experience the designers employed in order to maximize the positive fan experience.
The Network: The usual stadium experience is an overloaded network which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to text, e-mail and surf the web. At LiveStrong, 30 miles of fiber optic cable and 200 routers offer enough bandwidth to allow 20,000 fans to upload or download all they want.
Seat Check-Ins: QR codes on the stadium seats allow fans to check in and reveal their location for meet ups or bragging rights. This season, the functionality will be enhanced so that seat holders can add a credit card to their account for food orders or to buy licensed merchandise.
Jumbotron: Tweets with the hashtag #sportingKC scroll on the Jumbotron before, during and after games.
Sporting Explore App: Fans can earn points by answering trivia questions and there are engagement pieces to the app as well.
Command Center: The park boasts a data-monitoring system that shows who's online, for how long and what they are doing. On average, 1,700 fans are using a smartphone at any one time.
StadiumVision: More than 350 screens run on StadiumVision, a Cisco platform that enables the targeting of ads to the right section of seats. (As an example, Ford pushes Escorts at field level and Lincoln Mercurys in the luxury boxes.)
Not only does Sporting KC boast the only truly local ownership group for a Kansas City professional franchise, it now has a stadium which is the premier venue for its sport.
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