At a glance
Industry
Media & entertainment
Location
Germany
Challenge
Improve the visitor experience, reduce risk and increase revenues with an AI-powered visitor flow management solution.
Success Highlights
- Up to 60,100 football fans enjoy an enhanced experience with less time spent queueing
- Over 2 million annual visitors to Deutsche Bank Park stand to benefit from shorter queues
- Over 90% accuracy achieved by the solution in calculating wait times
The challenge
EintrachtTech is responsible for digital transformation and the development of innovative digital business models at and around Deutsche Bank Park, the home ground of Bundesliga powerhouse Eintracht Frankfurt Fußball AG.
Germany’s fourth-largest football club by membership numbers regularly draws up to 60,100 fans to the stadium. But Eintracht is also more than just a football team—over 50 sports are played under the Eintracht brand—and Deutsche Bank Park is more than just a football stadium. This vast 420,000-square-meter venue hosts concerts, festivals and exhibitions, welcoming over 2 million visitors annually.
Our approach
As the integration lead, Cognizant orchestrated the design and development of a visual sensing platform that can calculate wait times and provide the basis for taking appropriate action.
Real-time footage from cameras at gates and kiosks would feed data protection compliance into an AI model trained to analyze visitor flow. The estimated waiting times calculated from this data are displayed on screens above the kiosks. In the future, this data may also be displayed in mainaqila, the app developed by EintrachtTech. The data could also be used to direct stadium staff to congested areas to help manage the crowd.
Key elements of the project included:
- Hardware integration: Cognizant integrated cameras chosen by EintrachtTech into the visitor flow management solution.
- Camera locations and angles: Establishing the right locations and camera angles was crucial to the success of the project. We trialed different locations and angles until a good selection of monitoring points was established.
- AI-model training: The AI model had to be capable of observing people in a given area and calculating how long an individual had to wait. While this worked well in some areas and conditions, the model had to be fine-tuned to handle certain conditions and cases, such as:
- People in similar clothing: Many fans arrive on match days wearing Eintracht tops and scarves, potentially undermining the AI model’s ability to distinguish individuals.
- Weather and light conditions: Rainy days bring out umbrellas, making it hard for the model to detect how many people might be underneath one. In winter months, fans sometimes leave the stadium after dark, creating more identification challenges.
- Queuing versus loitering: The model had to be trained to distinguish between people queuing and people simply being in the area of their own accord.
- Data privacy and GDPR: The model is trained to observe and follow faces, requiring the capture and short-term processing of facial metadata. EintrachtTech required this data to be fully anonymized, such that the solution cannot perform facial recognition of individuals. While test data was kept for 72 hours to train the models, live data is deleted immediately after processing, in compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
- Testing: The solution was tested on match days at both the men’s and women’s games, as well as on concert days, to test with differing crowd levels. The model was refined after each test. After testing at multiple games, the solution achieved over 90% accuracy in predicting wait times—meaning that in over 90% of the cases, the prediction matched the expected range. It was now ready to go live.
Business outcomes
EintrachtTech now benefits from an AI-powered visitor flow management solution that is delivering significant benefits to Eintracht Frankfurt, the stadium and the millions of fans who visit Deutsche Bank Park each year. With the solution live at five kiosks, benefits achieved to date include:
- Enhanced visitor experience: Improved capacity management means visitors spend less time queuing and more time enjoying being at one of the world’s top stadiums.
- Increased revenue potential: The solution cuts waiting times at kiosks, reducing abandonment rates. This creates higher revenue potential for Eintracht and its catering partners, as well as a better experience for visitors.
