SPIRITS UP: The new Spirited cocktail stands, using autonomous technology, have been a hit over the first two months of operation at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. (Courtesy venue)

Tech ‘stars’ align at Mercedes-Benz Stadium

ATLANTA, Georgia — AMB Sports and Entertainment has formed a new technology platform, Constellation, to integrate multiple tech systems at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and plans to market it to other big league facilities in the future.

Officials with AMB Sports, which runs the NFL and MLS venue, laid out the proprietary technology and what’s driving the need for it during a panel discussion in mid-July at the stadium.

Constellation is the platform’s working title with an investment that currently stands in the mid-six figures, officials said.

“We see the value for ourselves and we think others will see the value as well,” said Gordon Barfield, AMB Sports’ vice president of business innovation. “We would like to start selling it other teams, but we’re not there yet. Teams are trying to get to the same end result in different ways. As far as we know, we’re the only ones doing it the way we’re doing it. It gives us a lot of flexibility to bring in new vendors if needed.”

AMB Sports has been on the leading edge of developing a totally frictionless experience for football and soccer fans through the use of facial notification technologies in ticketing and concessions, and as the group continues to expand those systems around the building, there was a need to consolidate everything into one cohesive entity.

Constellation essentially ties together existing technologies in place at the stadium, working in tandem with vendors such as Coca-Cola, AT&T, Ticketmaster, mobile traffic application Waze, biometrics provider Wicket and point-of-sale and payment processor Global Payments, into a more efficient and less costly operation. The Delta Fly-Thru lanes and the new Spirited self-serve cocktail stands are two examples of facial notification systems woven into the Constellation platform.

“It’s the idea of taking a bunch of disparate systems and connecting them together,” Barfield said. “With stadiums like us, we can have 20 different fan-facing systems. They’re fragmented, and as a result, you get disjointed experiences coming to the building. You’re dealing with trying to use a ticket and the ticket system doesn’t talk to you. It’s the same with parking and point-of-sale. Nothing really talks to each other. We’re connecting the ‘stars,’ which are the various systems.”

The process for establishing Constellation started two years ago as AMB Sports’ tech staff dove deep into cutting-edge technologies in sports and entertainment. At the time, officials weren’t intentionally trying to develop a holistic solution, but as more tech services were being introduced at the stadium, they found a need to wrap it up into one cohesive bundle, in part to have the flexibility to swap out systems if necessary and avoid the complications that would otherwise come with it.

For point-of-sale, for example, Mercedes-Benz Stadium has five different systems in place, depending on whether it’s general concessions or premium dining, and it can be a nightmare switching out an old corporate partner’s technology with a newer product, Barfield said. Constellation’s integration makes it much easier to complete that transition without having to buy an individual vendor, which was part of the driving force behind forming the in-house technology, he said.

In addition, Constellation consolidates all of the sales data from multiple systems into one comprehensive report, compared with the old model in which AMB Sports would collect five separate reports from the five point-of-sale providers.

“It was more about the business challenges that we are seeing and the resources that we currently have,” said Karl Pierburg, a senior vice president with AMB Sports and chief technology officer. “Gordon and I sit right next to each other and we were kicking ideas around and thought we can probably tap into this. We’re able to do something agile, which is the whole goal of it, being the connective tissue. We’re not creating a menu in the system, we’re just connecting, using existing capabilities, and it merges pretty nicely.”

VenuesNow Senior Editor Don Muret’s column runs in the September issue of the magazine.