Chelsea Football Club: Smart Stadia Hackathon
Last week, two of our students participated in the Smart Stadia Hackathon hosted by Chelsea Football Club.
After a week of being “Chelseafied” to gain an inside view of what happens away from the pitch at Chelsea FC, Sport Business and Leadership MSc students Charlie Heyworth and Liz Hyde presented technological sports solutions to a panel of judges on the final day.
Fan engagement is one of many key areas for concern for Chelsea who, over the coming years, will face hurdles when they move out of Stamford Bridge to play home games at Wembley whilst their West London home is refurbished into a state-of-the-art 60,000 capacity stadium. To proactively discover solutions, Chelsea are piloting a collaborative innovation strategy, whereby a range of knowledge-exchanging hacks aim to help the club work collaboratively with a range of innovative businesses to pioneer new strategies which will ensure the club strives to outperform its competitors – both on and off the pitch.
Chelsea’s Head of Employability and Enterprise, and organiser of the hackathon, Carl Southwell explained “The hack allows us to interact with new companies, people and ideas and allow different areas of the club to see if they are presenting some solutions to the challenges we face at the club. By allowing the companies to learn and become ‘Chelseafied’ they can deliver some really tailored and niche propositions that we need rather than an off the shelf solution.”
At Chelsea’s Smart Stadia hackathon, disruptive sports tech companies from around the world were asked to propose different niched solutions that would improve the fan experience on match days. Loughborough students worked alongside Ryan McCumber (former Global Head of Tech at KPMG) to pitch technological solutions from companies that could radically improve the future matchday experiences of fans at Stamford Bridge.
Last year, Loughborough University London formed a three-year strategic partnership with Chelsea Football Club. To find out more about Charlie's experience of the Smart Stadia Hackathon, please see our blog post.
Loughborough is one of the country’s leading universities, with an international reputation for research that matters, excellence in teaching, strong links with industry, and unrivalled achievement in sport and its underpinning academic disciplines.
It has been awarded five stars in the independent QS Stars university rating scheme, named the best university in the world for sports-related subjects in the 2020 QS World University Rankings and top in the country for its student experience in the 2018 THE Student Experience Survey.
Loughborough is in the top 10 of every national league table, being ranked 4th in the Guardian University League Table 2020, 5th in the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2020 and 8th in The UK Complete University Guide 2020.
Loughborough is consistently ranked in the top twenty of UK universities in the Times Higher Education’s ‘table of tables’ and is in the top 10 in England for research intensity. In recognition of its contribution to the sector, Loughborough has been awarded seven Queen's Anniversary Prizes.
Specialising exclusively in postgraduate-level study, Loughborough University London is based on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and offers cutting-edge master’s and PhD degrees, as well as business collaboration, research and enterprise opportunities.
The seven specialist institutes at Loughborough University London include: Design Innovation, Digital Technologies, Diplomacy and International Governance, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, International Management, Media and Creative Industries, and Sport Business. Close industry partnerships with a wealth of leading businesses and creative organisations means teaching and learning is informed by real-life challenges and driven by true industry pressures.