Where sports, innovation and public infrastructure come together
Where sports, innovation and public infrastructure come together
The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) hosts a variety of competitions, the most prominent of which are the annual Champions League and the European Championship every four years. UEFA has specific pitch programs for all its competitions. Sportsfields.info had the opportunity to go behind the scenes and to understand what it takes to deliver a field worthy to host a final.
By: Guy Oldenkotte
The 2024 UEFA Champions League between Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid at Wembley Stadium was watched on TV by close to half a billion spectators in over 200 territories. This was over twice as much as the 202.4 million viewers audience insight company Nielsen recorded at least part of the Super Bowl earlier this year.
Wembley Stadium is by all means the Mecca of modern football and is blessed with a dedicated grounds team that works day in, day out to maintain the pitch in top condition. “The groundsman at that stadium virtually lives inside the stadium. He considers the pitch as his baby where in Berlin (which hosted the final and five games of the European Championship this summer) we had to deal with an outside contractor who might be less attached to the field,” a UEFA representative made the comparison. Passion aside, hosting a Champions League final is a totally different ballgame. “Our top management sees it as the Super bowl. The Super bowl is a huge event, and the Champions League, rightly so, should be up there in terms of a spectacle but also in terms of viewership.” This explains why an event that in the past would kick off with a sober ceremony on the field accompanied by the European hymn, has nowadays become a spectacle with dancers, singers, podiums and fireworks on the pitch. The implications of this, we will discuss later.
Every year, UEFA organises between 2.500 and 3.000 games all over Europe. Prior to each game, the pitch is tested by an independent testing company and all data is fed into a massive data lake. This data helps UEFA in their decision making. “All these visits are planned in advance or mandated when an issue or potential issue is identified. In the interest of transparency, we will share the report as soon as it has become available. These reports contain the results from testing, aligned with advice in the short, medium and long term. We maintain post visit contact and support by means of remote monitoring.” He points out that the data can be an important contributing factor when decisions need to be made that require escalation to senior management level like requiring a significant financial investment or an urgent intervention. “The data is there to protect stakeholders: the grounds keepers, stadium managers, consultants, UEFA. Because when UEFA turns up on site for a Champions League final, it is an army of suits that turn up, making demands of the ground keeper. They want to know if TV can go on the pitch and film something with the trophy. They want to have a ceremony rehearsal or a training session on match day etc. etc.”
Continue reading with a subscription or subscribe
Four days prior to the game, the technical rehearsals were interrupted by heavy rain. “We decided to collect pitch data in between strike-ins of the rehearsals and shared the heat maps with our ceremonies counterpart and with the artists, in this case Lenny Kravitz. He has a certain amount of rehearsals in the contract with Pepsi that they have to do when it’s only right. You cannot produce such a performance that’s going to be viewed by 200 million plus people without rehearsing. We saw we were making a big impact in terms of the pitch and compacting the pitch. Based on the data collected and the visualisation of the impact of the rehearsals on the pitch, it was decided to reduce the amount of strike-ins to save the pitch from further damage. We then did technical rehearsals without the performers, and we were able to give that back and forth again.” The UEFA official explained that “they were not pitch experts, but the visual that you can present them with the printout, they understood very quickly.”
“We decided to collect pitch data in between strike-ins of the rehearsals and shared the heat maps with our ceremonies counterpart and with the artists, in this case Lenny Kravitz."
