Innovation

Reimagine Football innovations in the KNVB Oranje App

The KNVB, The Royal Dutch Football Association, chose a number of Reimagine Football innovations which have been implemented in their KNVB Oranje App, aimed at fans of the Dutch national football teams. Martin van Ginkel, Project leader home games Dutch national team for the KNVB explains how they have enhanced their product but also the challenges they came across.
KNVB oranje app groot

Which Reimagine Football winners are part of the KNVB Oranje app and why?

We enriched our KNVB Oranje App with two winners from the first challenges. Wizzymaps and VOGO. They both improve the customer journey for the Orange fans and that it is all about.

How do these innovations enhance the fan experience?

Wizzymaps is embedded in the KNVB Oranje App and helps our Orange fans to optimize the last kilometres of their journey to the Johan Cruijff ArenA. This enhances the fan experience. With Wizzymaps we are able to inform the Orange fans in a lot of ways. For example where to buy a parking ticket, where the Orange Fanzone is and what to enjoy there, what the actual waiting times are to enter the stadium and what F&B the stadium offers inside the stadium bowl.

With VOGO we did a pilot for Orange fans in the Johan Cruijff ArenA which gave them the possibility to watch replays on their smartphone. We know from our data that many stadium visitors watch the highlights when they get home. So this adds value to the fan experience in the customer journey of stadium visitors and it combines the TV experience with the live match experience for an ultimate football evening.

What were the biggest challenges or what did you learn?

I learned to just start doing and use our events as a test environment for further development of Reimagine Football innovations. A great example of that is the Reimagine Football Innovation Catchphrase. As innovation partner, together with the Johan Cruijff ArenA, we started creating an Catchphrase event management platform for our events and after one and a half year we are still improving and enriching it. The Catchphrase platform now helps us in the flawless organization of our matches of the national team and thus contributes to the ultimate fan experience.

The biggest challenge is having patience, because the enthusiasm to develop always wants you to go faster. And especially due to the COVID pandemic and the consequence that we had to play matches without spectators, it was difficult to continue testing and improve quickly. So we had to be patient, but hope that in 2022 we can again be a full testing ground for new smart innovations to optimize the customer journey of the Orange fan and continue to surprise them.

The Johan Cruijff ArenA is always on the move

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