In the heart of Munich Olympic Park, SAP Garden is making its debut as the new home of the Red Bull Munich Ice Hockey Club.
This modern venue adds a fresh landmark to a thriving culture and promises to influence the sports-enthusiastic city for decades to come. Located in one of Europe’s key technology hubs, SAP Garden strengthens the company’s presence with customers and partners. It also provides a creative space for employees and future talent at the nearby SAP Labs Munich location, situated on the grounds of the Technical University of Munich (TUM).
Fan-First Approach
SAP Garden will host up to 11,500 hockey and basketball fans while serving as a seeding ground for new innovations in sports and entertainment. During the planning stages, SAP, Red Bull Munich, and FC Bayern Basketball worked together to explore ways to elevate the fan experience. Through design thinking workshops, the teams drew on collective creativity and insights from the startup ecosystem, including the Digital Product School by UnternehmerTUM.
The result is a unified digital platform designed to enhance the experience for all visitors within the arena. This includes streamlined ticket purchasing with SAP Event Ticketing, mobile tickets for easy access and transfer capabilities, and 3D seating maps that illustrate the view from any seat in the venue. Fans can also earn rewards for choosing sustainable travel options through the Red Bull Munich loyalty program ‘CheckBack’, managed in SAP Customer Checkout. Mobile ordering, cashless payments, and real-time stock updates further enhance convenience, allowing fans to focus on the game, not the lines.
SAP Garden also uses SAP Customer Experience solutions such as SAP Customer Identity and Access Management for real-time authentication across digital touchpoints. This supports a seamless experience from ticketing to in-arena purchases, all while managing fan consent and preferences.
Experience SAP Garden’s digital services here:
Enhanced Venue Management and Analytics
Financial management and streamlined processes are crucial for the success of a multi-sports arena. To drive operational efficiency and profitability at SAP Garden, the venue leverages a wide range of SAP solutions, including SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), which combines data and analytics, application development, and integration in one unified environment. SAP Integration Suite enables seamless data flow between the arena’s systems and applications like SAP S/4HANA, optimizing revenue tracking and helping to manage operational costs. Further, SAP Analytics Cloud provides essential dashboards for analyzing sales data from ticketing, merchandise, catering, and more in order to improve matchday performance.
Next-Level Event Reporting
Looking ahead, SAP Garden will leverage AI-driven data analysis with SAP’s copilot Joule, which allows users to access insights through natural language queries. Red Bull Munich is part of the beta program for SAP Analytics Cloud with Joule to gain firsthand insights.
The team is also part of a pilot program for the new SAP Analytics Cloud feature ‘video data stories,’ planned to be available to customers in early 2025. The video data stories feature presents business data through shareable video segments similar to social media content. For SAP Garden, this will make matchday reporting more engaging and accessible, enabling the venue to showcase key performance metrics through animated videos. Watch a prototype here.
Technological Edge in Sports
SAP Garden is more than just a venue; it demonstrates the power of technology in sports and entertainment. The collaboration of SAP, Red Bull Munich, and FC Bayern Basketball has reimagined the fan experience from the ground up, setting the stage for a new era of innovation in the industry.
Henrike Paetz is director of Global Sponsorships at SAP.
