The annual curtainraiser to the new Bundesliga season takes place on Saturday and fans of FC Bayern München and RB Leipzig will watch as their teams compete in the Supercup.
The clash between the two top clubs will also see a technology premiere as around 1,000 fans that are also football fans will be able to test a new app on their 5G compatible phones.
Vodafone developed the app together with the DFL. Spectators in selected blocks in the main stand can download the app to their smartphones via a QR code and use it directly during the 90 minutes of the match. Based on the latest 5G mobile communications technology, which Vodafone has activated in the stadium, and multi-access edge computing (MEC) technology, the app provides football fans with numerous live information and statistics on the current match action in real time directly on their smartphones.
“5G brings live statistics to our smartphones in the stadium without delay. For stats lovers, we are expanding the stadium experience on site with match information from the digital world,” said Vodafone Innovations Head Michael Reinartz. “At the Supercup, the technology will celebrate its premiere in front of a partial public: after a successful test with selected test persons in Wolfsburg and a demonstration in front of the guests of the SportsInnovation 2022, numerous fans will now be able to use the app with their own smartphones at a competitive match for the first time if they are interested.”
The new app works with the new mobile communications technology 5G and with data processing directly in the cloud close to where the action is – this is known as multi-access edge computing (MEC for short) technology, which Vodafone has activated together with Amazon Web Services (AWS). 5G+ makes bandwidths of up to 1,000 megabits per second possible.
This means that even thousands of fans can be on the web with their smartphones at the same time without any interruption of service. In addition, 5G+ reacts lightning fast with delay times of less than 10 milliseconds. Because the data does not have to travel long distances to be processed, fans can call up the live statistics on their smartphones virtually in real time.
