Oracle, The Future of Sports Stadiums

Oracle is an enterprise resource planning company that strives to eliminate the complexity of business operations and prides itself on speed, reliability, security, and manageability. They were recently tasked with conforming their business operations to enhance the consumer experience at sporting events, the Super Bowl in particular. Levi Stadium, the home of the San Francisco Forty-Niners and Super Bowl 50, promotes itself as “the best-connected stadium in the world” (Roberts).

            At an event as grand as the Super Bowl, everything is expected to work flawlessly. Oracle provided their cloud infrastructure to help aid in delivering concessions to fans at their seats. Tasked with a tough assignment, Oracle had to guarantee no problems due a lack of an item being ordered. If the nearest stand to you is low or out of the item ordered, “Oracle’s system alerts the app to source the item from a different stand” (Roberts).

            As a fan who has attended numerable sporting events, I can attest to how frustrating it is to leave your seat during a sporting event to get food or even go purchase merchandise. You want to go during intermissions where you will not miss any of the game, but with that comes the incredibly long lines that ultimately take so long that you end up missing some of the action. A system like Oracle provides an enhanced consumer experience, and is beginning to be implemented in numerous NFL stadiums.

            With the enhancing at-home viewing experience, it is becoming more difficult to convince people to attend in person. Even if stadiums are successful in getting people to attend their events, the fans do not want to be inconvenienced. A product like Oracle’s system, promotes and encourages fans to continue to attend sporting events despite the increasing costs because the in-person experience actually supersedes the at-home, inexpensive experience.

            My only foreseeable problems with a software like Oracle being integrated into sports is the resulting increase in the already expensive ticket prices. Additionally, I would be concerned with the reliability and efficiency of a system like Oracle being used to deliver concessions with the high demand and volume of people in attendance at these events. In order to utilize this system, you need to have a smart device that is capable of downloading the app and in addition the service connection needs to be strong even with the immense near-by activity.

            Overall, I think technology, like Oracle provides will drastically improve the consumer and fan experience at sporting events. I think that within no time the cloud infrastructure that is offered by Oracle will be found in every sports stadium, and the times without such technology will soon be forgotten.

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/how-oracle-helps-tackle-the-insane-food-demands-of-the-super-bowl-165828417.html