River Plate Club in Argentina Reinvents Its Estadio Monumental Stadium for Optimal Experience with Huawei AirEngine Wi-Fi 6

Founded in 1938, the Estadio Monumental is a stadium located 250 miles south of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is also home of River Plate, a world-renowned Argentine sports club established in 1901.

The stadium ever served as a venue for the 1978 World Cup that was won by the Argentina national football team. Back to the moment when the winner was unveiled, ecstatic fans cheered for Argentina's victory, and the entire stadium was overwhelmed by the team's iconic blue-and-white stripes. This historical event marked the 40-year-old stadium's first glorious moment. It also signified the beginning of a championship fairytale for the Argentina national football team. In the decades that followed this victory, the football team continued to win a plethora of honors, for example, they became 1986 World Cup winners, won the America's Cup 14 times, and won the Olympic football tournament two times.

Renovating the Estadio Monumental to Build a Smart Stadium

The stadium is ring-shaped and has South America's best drainage design. In addition to the major football field, it also has facilities for tennis, basketball, and many other sports, as well as a theater hall, a museum, and a parking lot larger than most stadiums. The stadium was remodeled for the first time to host the 1978 World Cup, with its capacity increased to more than 70,000 people.

This year, in order to further expand the stadium's capacity, build it into a world-leading stadium, and deliver superb experience to audiences and athletes alike, River Plate decided to renovate the stadium, including rebuilding its athletic tracks, refreshing its turf, and reconstructing its sound reinforcement system. Of course, the biggest concern of the renovation was not only the stadium's infrastructure; as demands for network access, instant messaging, and audio visual entertainment during live sports grow, optimizing network connectivity at the stadium was also of utmost importance. To bring wider sports fields, better network connectivity, and more comfortable watching experience to athletes and fans, Rodolfo D'Onofrio, President of River Plate, was determined to introduce an array of brand-new information technologies to build the Estadio Monumental into a world-class smart stadium.

Introducing Next-Generation Wi-Fi 6 for Premium Network Connectivity

Nowadays, audiences no longer merely require better sports watching experiences in stadiums. Instead, they want to share historic sports moments and their feelings with their families and friends in real time through communication software and social media before and during sports games. According to the Digital 2020 reports of We Are Social and Hootsuite, the number of mobile phone users in Argentina had exceeded its total population, with a ratio of 1.29:1. In addition, the average online duration of users was 4 hours and 32 minutes per day. Typically, stadium networks feature high density and high concurrency. As fans and stadium staff placed increasingly higher requirements on network access experience, how to plan, deploy, operate, and maintain network infrastructure became the biggest challenge faced by the stadium.

To find a Wi-Fi network best suited to the stadium, River Plate compared the network test results of multiple vendors and finally chose AirEngine Wi-Fi 6 for its unmatched performance. The Estadio Monumental stadium, like any other high-density scenario, was troubled by a variety of network issues, such as difficult network access, data congestion, and poor roaming performance. To address these challenges, Huawei designed an advanced, future-oriented wireless network solution with the following differentiation.

Maximized air interface utilization: Built on Huawei's field-proven Wi-Fi 6 products and cutting-edge air interface optimization technology, this solution enables faster, more stable, and smoother wireless network access. The solution also adopts the world-leading scheduling algorithm, which schedules users based on the channel occupation duration as well as service priority of users, improving air interface utilization and enabling more users to concurrently access the network without frame freezing.

Minimal network O&M workload: The solution features an intelligent campus network analyzer —iMaster NCE-CampusInsight. The analyzer collects network data in real time, as well as learns network behavior and identifies potential faults based on big data analytics and machine learning algorithms. In addition, it proactively discovers 85% of potential network issues, minimizing network O&M workload and slashing ICT device maintenance costs.

Intelligent Wireless Network Fuels an International Smart Stadium

During a TV media interview, President Rodolfo said: "We will have a high-quality Wi-Fi 6 network that delivers Wi-Fi signals to every corner of the stadium, including the hospital, convenience stores, and parking lot. With Huawei's unmatched Wi-Fi 6, we will truly build an international smart stadium."

AirEngine Wi-Fi 6 also delivers more tangible benefits to the club and bring convenience to fans. For example, capitalizing on the stadium's superb, fully-wireless network, the club can push promotional information to over 70,000 fans in real time and stimulate them to place orders on their mobile phones. What's more, leveraging AirEngine Wi-Fi 6, the stadium's smart parking system can prompt fans of available parking spaces and packing durations in real time. Looking to the future, River Plate will deploy more IoT-powered smart systems and applications to provide more convenient and advanced services for fans and build the Estadio Monumental into a truly world-class smart stadium.