Munich, Germany, April 2025 – The new SAP Garden in Munich is an impressively space-age 50,000 m² multifunctional sports venue, home to both the EHC Red Bull München Hockey and FC Bayern München Basketball teams. Opened in September of 2024, the arena was designed to revolutionise the fan experience through the implementation of innovative and, most importantly, interactive technology. To achieve this, bright! studios, a leading creative technology company, leant on the power of SP software from Stage Precision to develop a workflow that enables tracking data to be transformed into engaging visual content for real-time gaming and audience participation, bringing to life Red Bull’s innovative concept of a new spectator experience.

bright! became involved in the project following a recommendation. “The goal was to make the arena a kind of interactive playground, a unique vision that we were excited to be involved in,” explains Leon Herche, Creative Producer at bright! “They wanted to implement technology that would allow the spectators of hockey or basketball games to be actively involved in the experience of watching a match.” bright! required a workflow solution to unify data tracking, content and lighting and, in turn, build a series of interactive games and ‘events’. This level of audience participation would see the SAP Garden step into a new era of sports entertainment.

“Our digital platform was growing in the direction of interactive entertainment and we needed to find the right platform and experts to help us build this and integrate it with our own app to give audience members access to these gamifications,” explains a spokesperson at Red Bull Munich. “This is where our collaboration with bright! and SP began.”

To make this vision a reality, bright! gathered tracking data, video content and lighting together into a workflow that could handle the complexities of live sport and reliably deliver believable and accurate interactive content. Central to this workflow is SP by Stage Precision, which acts as the core control platform for all interactivity.

The system relies on tracking data from UWB chips built into the players’ clothing, hockey pucks or basketballs. This data is then processed in SP, which smooths and refines it, before sending commands and tracking data to ioversal Vertex media servers, Unreal Engine and the lighting console to trigger animations and lighting effects. “The accuracy of the data isn’t ideal, it has to be smoothed out,” says Herche. “SP allowed us to add filters, manipulate and predict the data to ensure a natural experience for viewers and players.”

Six ceiling-mounted projectors ensure that these visual elements align perfectly with the players and objects in the game. Herche continues, “With SP’s calibration features, calibrating the lights to match the tracking system was incredibly fast.”

The newly released SP Grid platform facilitates the creation of custom interfaces, which enable easy control of the games for the arena staff. These interfaces can be operated through tablets – no complex coding is required to run the system during live events. “The simplicity of the SP interface makes it super user-friendly,” said Herche. “Even the arena team, without specific technical experience, can start and stop games and manage the system easily.”

The interactive features developed for the SAP Garden help to bring fans closer to the action. For example, during ice rink resurfacing, the ice machines are tracked to trigger animated visuals that play on the hockey rink. bright! created a ‘light roulette’ game which shines a light on a nominated spectator seat, adding an extra layer of excitement during crowd participation. An impact-responsive LED ring that displays commercials around the outside of the ice rink or basketball court responds dynamically to wall impacts during the game, with adverts wobbling and warping when touched. Finally, player and puck or ball tracking leverages gameplay data to trigger various animations and effects during match break games, completely transforming traditionally held ideas of what to expect from a live sports experience.

Another unique aspect of the project was the development of real-time, interactive MR games. This includes a custom integration of Stage Precision’s Unreal Engine 5 plug-in, Shield, with Meta Quest. With this integration, the audience can interact with a player wearing a VR headset via a mobile app, facilitating interactive games.

In other games, without MR headsets, audience members can play ‘virtual dodgeball’ by throwing virtual balls at individuals on the rink, or participate in games like Red Light, Green Light, among others.

“No other software brings together a 3D stage tracking system with a user-friendly control interface like SP,” remarks Herche on why SP was the preferred platform for this project. “This was crucial for us, especially when we needed to integrate new ideas on the fly.”

The integration of SP has laid the groundwork for the ongoing evolution of the SAP Garden’s interactive experience. bright! can continue to develop new games and content and easily deploy them via the workflow and presets already created within SP. Herche added, “We can create new games in Unreal, feed them with the tracking data and test them out easily, without the need for complex programming.”

“Handling the games internally has been easy and the feedback from fans has been super positive, with impressive rates of game participation from audiences,” confirms a spokesperson from Red Bull Munich. “From our side, there are so many different stakeholders within the arena, who are responsible for various technologies and departments. It has been amazing to see how easy it is to connect all of these stakeholders within SP.”

With the ideas and execution of the bright! studios team and the versatile data management toolkit of SP, Munich’s SAP Garden has set a new standard for live sports entertainment, an environment where fans are not just spectators but active participants. “This project wasn’t just about the technology. It was about creating a shared experience to bring fans closer to the sport,” summarises Herche. “SP gives us the tools to make these ambitious ideas happen.”