Arthur Stanley
WEDNESDAY night’s much-anticipated State of Origin game will provide the NSW Blues with their best opportunity in nine years to break Queensland’s stranglehold on the Origin trophy.
But it will also give fans their first opportunity to watch an Origin game in a fully Connected Stadium. And, provided the Blues can do it, they will become the first in history to tweet that the Blues have won an Origin series – as Twitter was not part of our lives in 2005 when NSW last won the shield.
Stadium Australia will become an interactive playground on Wednesday night after the Olympic venue earlier this year became the first stadium in Australasia to offer a free Wi-Fi service to all fans throughout the venue.
The capacity 83,000 crowd will be able to connect to the Wi-Fi via their smart phones or tablets, upload photos, interact on social media and have their tweets posted on fan engagement screens set up throughout Sydney Olympic Park.
But that’s not all. On the back of the free Wi-Fi service, Stadium Australia has also rolled out a Stadium APP that takes the event experience into another realm.
The connected experience for Wednesday night’s Origin game will start even before fans begin their journey to the Stadium, with the Stadium Australia APP enabling patrons to purchase tickets while also receiving content that advises the best transport routes to the game and any traffic snarls, the best place to park, maps to your gate and directions within the Stadium, and where and how they can order food and beverages.
Fans can interact with the Blues and the Maroons digital teams, keep up with all social trends through their networks and even chat with Stadium Australia’s social media concierge.
Fans will be encouraged to take “Selfies” in their seats around the Stadium and use dedicated team photo templates to “Show Your True Blue (or Maroon) Support” across social networks.
If fans run low on battery power at the footy, they can recharge at Stadium Australia’s purpose-built Charge Bars, located around the venue.
“At its simplest, our Connected Stadium project makes it easier to make a phone call, send a text message or connect with friends on social media at major events like Origin,” said Greg Sleigh, Stadium Australia’s General Manager of Event & Business Development.
“But we are also progressively rolling out engagement features through the APP, with the goal to go well beyond the home entertainment experience and combine this exciting new digital technology with the exhilaration and camaraderie of being at the game. Nothing can beat that.
“In conjunction with our event partners – the sporting bodies and clubs that use the Stadium – fans now have access to an entire technology stack that works together in providing a completely new event experience.”
The Queensland stronghold on the State of Origin series means no one has ever produced a social media post trumpeting a NSW series victory. Whatever the result on Wednesday night, the Stadium, in conjunction with the Sydney Olympic Park Authority and Twitter, have some surprises in store for patrons.
“If this State of Origin game isn’t exciting enough, how good will it be to be able to see your tweets and your image on screens set up around the Sydney Olympic Park . . . and many of us are hoping that we will actually see who becomes the first person in history to tweet, `Blues win Origin series’.”
Want to #ScoreFreeWiFi? Go Settings, Wi-Fi, choose ANZS.
Want to find the new Stadium Australia APP? Download it for free in the iOS app store. Android version is available soon.
