Are you selling your venue short by reporting only sell-out flatline metrics? Understanding the core differences between occupancy and capacity tracking can impact not only your food and beverage revenue but the value of sponsorship advertisements. 

There’s nothing more appealing than a sold-out event. It’s the epitome of success for sports and entertainment venues as it indicates high volumes of on-premise foot traffic. For venue managers, it’s also a flag that indicates the level of staff required to be on-site, inventory management, and the value of your advertisement placements.

 For a long time, we’ve understood capacity – how many we can fit – and occupancy – how many showed up for the game as clear indicators of success. It seems simple enough, but the advent of machine learning brings deeper insights through visualizations and predictive analytics that have the power to accelerate enhancements of the fan experience.

 So, exactly what happens when you look at occupancy data throughout the entire event to surface deeper insights? The next era of stadium technology is ushering in data like:

●      Peak periods of occupancy on the concourse throughout the duration of the event

●      Total concourse foot traffic patterns and the impact of opening two hours before a major event

●      Empty craft beer patios coinciding with long lines at higher-priced stations.

These are the types of data points the Milwaukee Bucks examined at Fiserv Forum during the 2021 NBA Championship series. With the benefits of AI and machine learning, we are able to surface deep insights that drive decision-making around fan experience and sponsor engagement.

Here’s an example: a sold-out, game three, NBA Championship event at x stadium has a maximum capacity of 18,000 seats. That’s 18,000 people with buying power. Each of those people will enter and exit the stadium through the main concourse.

CONCOURSE OCCUPANCY CAN BE AS HIGH AS 5X YOUR CAPACITY

During a championship basketball game, space analytics software captured a total of 90,000 visits to the concourse in six hours — five times the number of seats available for attendance. How could that be? Well, as a visitor enjoys the entire experience, they move through the concourse on their way to the shops, bathrooms and concession stands several times. When analyzed in comparison to other types of events, the total occupancy through your concourse figures can reveal and predict concession ROI.

Surfacing this number is more valuable to sponsors in understanding the true exposure to their brand. Sponsors understand the value of volume when it comes to ad placement and are willing to maximize their spend. Surfacing capacity instead of occupancy figures provides just a fragment of the total impressions available. Understanding the difference between these metrics is paramount; if there is any hesitancy towards these terms, or there’s relating to space occupancy, check out our definitions blog. Ultimately, this can validate ad spend to sponsors and partners by offering reports with accurate brand exposure and providing them with validation benchmarks for owners.

VISUALIZING FOOT-TRAFFIC PATTERNS ADDS CONTEXT FOR REVENUE OPTIMIZATIONS

Venue operators and managers have historically run successful live events using occupancy as a percentage of capacity (how many arrived vs how many seats were available) as a main data point. That value is still a great way to kick-off event management but as the fan experience evolves, meeting the needs of venue attendees will too. In today’s world, point-of-sale is your smartphone, grab-and-go food and beverage kiosks are a norm, and the speed of gratification is ever-accelerating. A birds-eye view of space utilization can tell you how to map out your venue to optimize traffic flows, validated by historical data and predictive analytics.

When architects and design teams visualize space, they assume traffic patterns based on blueprints and design for efficacy around those assumptions. When we verify those hypothetical movements and fan behaviors through data, we are able to better optimize bottlenecks, address point-of-sale performance, or redirect movement for better flow – i.e., getting more people through lines faster – and ultimately improving the fan experience.

With dashboards that visualize your entire arena, spatial planning and optimization is more easily understood by everyone at your facility. Back-of-the-house crews can use alerting features to identify bottlenecks and re-route traffic, cleaning facilities can become more efficient, and apps can surface queuing needs to attendees. Executives, operations managers, marketing teams, and financial analysts can strategize optimal ad placements and sponsorship tiers, validate costly redesigns, and project F&B revenue more accurately.

About the Author

Madelaine Moeke is Director of Insights & Analytics at Lambent, a company specializing in space analytics and crowd intelligence. She has been working in the sports industry for over a decade with a focus on turning raw data into actionable insights that drive everything from food and beverage sales to improving the fan experience. Her immersion in the sports venue management industry is helping premium entertainment venues redefine the next generation of live events.

Data indicates that organizations plan to continue a hybrid work model for the near term. A Mercer survey last May found 70% of companies said a blend of in-person and remote working will be the new normal.

But this hybrid model will also place greater onus on employers and facility managers to provide a healthy and safe working environment when employees are in the office.

That’s a tall order when 52% of employers said that they are only “somewhat prepared” to provide safe and healthy environments for their tenants and employees.

There are no easy answers to make workplaces, universities or other gathering spots safe and productive. But one important aspect of office and public health involves workspace analytics software, which helps organizations better safeguard workers in the office and make them more productive. 

Workspace analytics technology provides insight into employee density in a given physical space. By issuing alerts when the number of workers reaches capacity in a given space, the technology can ensure that workers’ social distance from one another. The technology can also queue up cleaning services or other workflows as necessary when spaces are used. Workspace analytics can also integrate with other workplace scheduling and collaboration tools to schedule meetings, create capacity alerts, or to trigger follow-up activities.

Technologies such as Lambent have become increasingly critical to determining worker density, and environmental factors, such as building temperature, electricity used on a given floor or in a room. The software can enlist an organization’s existing cameras, sensors or other hardware, then derive data from these devices to track how many people have entered a facility.

We sat down with Chris Lord, Co-founder and CTO, to discuss the value of workplace analytics in organizations today.

WHY IS WORKSPACE ANALYTICS GATHERING STEAM RIGHT NOW?

Chris Lord: The pandemic that we’ve all lived through is probably one of the driving forces behind it. Two years ago, space utilization was an important part, but it wasn’t a necessary part. 

The pandemic has really shifted people’s thinking in terms of what is necessary [vis-à-vis a physical presence in the office].

 It’s forced us to reconsider how we use space [and to ask questions like], “When do we need to meet and why?” And “How often do we need to be in the office together?”

That’s really forced us to collect data to understand and ultimately to optimize what we do. Then the big questions are, “What is it that we’re trying to optimize?” and “Are we trying to optimize employee experience? Operational costs? Capital costs?”

You don’t just need data, you need the right data to inform the decisions you’re trying to make. 

In some cases, we need precise data to help with hot-desking [a shared-desk system for hybrid office/remote work models].

So, you may need that data to develop a hot-desking model, or you may need to understand overall utilization patterns and patterns of life within your space so that you can make coarse-grained decisions: “Do I have enough space or too much? Is it underutilized? That’s what’s driving a lot of corporate clients toward [workspace analytics] and where we obviously play a big role.

AS YOU CREATE THESE DASHBOARDS HOW DO YOU DETERMINE THESE ORGANIZATIONS’ END GOALS?

CL: We have a set of proven use cases that can help customers. That can direct the conversation, but at the end of the day, it’s really trying to understand what it is that [customers] want to do and what are the questions that they’re asking? 

So, the value of Lambent is that you get continuous information about your environment, and how it’s being used. It’s something that’s there all the time. Sometimes that requires a deeper conversation on the facility side. [Companies] are used to these one-off studies that are a point-in-time snapshot and given the rapid change around us, has a shelf life. 

A point-in-time study that [I] did two years ago has very little bearing on what [I] need to do today. We can provide the look-back to last month, last year, last quarter, but the value of it every day and that opens up new opportunities.

I like to talk about democratization [of data], taking our data and making it available to your employees, to tenants, to whoever needs to make a decision. Our vision was three years ago, four years ago, to be the Google maps of people, not cars: Being able to show you where people are at any point in time. That’s the democratization of data.

HOW DO YOU SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF DATA-DRIVEN DASHBOARDS THAT AREN’T ACTIONABLE?

CL: Most people don’t have the time to swim in all the data. It’s not their job to be exploring data. What they need to do is figure out how to do what they’re doing better, faster, easier with fewer people at less expense than they did before. 

Most people don’t have the time to swim in all the data. It’s not their job to be exploring data. What they need to do is figure out how to do what they’re doing better, faster, easier with fewer people at less expense than they did before. 

CHRIS LORD, CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, LAMBENT

The shift for us has been one of building our application, the set of features within the application, and through our partners to directly address what that looks like. Some of that is simple. So some of that is you know rather than present you a lot of charts and graphs, we present you the KPIs [key performance indicators]. So right at the top are the set of KPIs that tell you, what’s happening at a glance. Some of it is building in capabilities like alerting, right? Rather than having to let you look at the data and make a decision we’re just telling you about the decision that needs to be made, based on the triggers that are important to your organization to your environment. And so that’s, that’s one way, you know, you don’t have to be living in the dashboard. 

We can target the data experience to the persona—to a role, a function. When you come in you self-identify as I’m a facilities manager, “I’m in charge of operations, I have a staff that is there on game day, I am–whatever [the role] is. You identify, and then your experience is tailored to your needs. 

Then our software asks you, “What changes would you make if you had dynamic and new information all the time?” If I’m a university, I’m scheduling custodial services, if I’m an office place. I’m scheduling the same sort of thing, and I’m making determinations as to whether I clean these rooms, don’t clean these rooms, have to have more people on staff, because there’s more people there. All these things are things that we’re used to thinking of and doing in a very static way.

AS WE LOOK AT THE PAST 18 MONTHS, THIS TECHNOLOGY IS SO TIMELY. IT HAS REAL IMPLICATIONS FOR SO MANY DIFFERENT INDUSTRIES.

CL: Our earliest customers were in the university space. The safety and the security of students is foremost in [universities’] mind all the time, and we were an effective part of that. But those conversations opened up opportunities in better use of space. 

And they’ve also shifted into opportunities around, “How can we improve the outcomes of students?”  “Are we providing the right resources based on where they’re spending their time? “Are there things that we can learn about how groups of students are spending their time, respecting their privacy, that will inform better space and better information delivery to our students?” 

And so we started there. And now, sports stadiums are a huge customer for us, and other venues where we bring people together. People are their core business, right? And if people are your core business. you want to know where they’re spending their time, you want to know where those opportunities are. 

When it comes to reopening corporate spaces, there are still many unknowns. Should I renew my prior lease? Who will work full time in the office? Will they all get desks? But one thing is for sure: Space utilization will be top of mind for anyone managing an office building or campus.

Our glossary of Space Utilization terms, which includes occupancy and capacity, is helpful to keep handy as you assess the buildings and spaces you manage. And this year, facilities managers and space planning teams are likely to also year about something called occupancy analytics.

HOW DO YOU DEFINE SPACE UTILIZATION?

In its simplest terms, space utilization is occupancy divided by capacity as measured over time. Let’s say you know 150 people use the cafeteria each Monday 8 am-12 pm and your capacity for the space is 300. Well, this one is simple: cafeteria space utilization Monday mornings is 50%.

But that’s just the first layer. There are numerous ways in which space utilization can be influenced. How a space is used, for how many purposes, and how often its full capacity is needed, are all factors to consider. Facilities managers considering priorities for 2021 likely also want to look at things like crowd density and restricting occupancy to help meet safer social distancing standards.

WHAT IS SPACE OCCUPANCY?  

Space occupancy is defined as the number of people in the office (or any space) at any given time. This is a simple one but perhaps the most important, especially at a time when the number of people can be limited due to restrictions around distance. For space occupancy, real-time metrics are invaluable, and AI can help surface instant views rather than relying on manual counts of each room or meeting space.

HOW DO YOU MEASURE UNDERUTILIZATION?

To measure underutilization, you’d have to know your capacity and occupancy over time and set a goal for acceptable utilization at your company. The biggest problem with underutilized space is obvious: you’re paying for it. When considering new leases, knowing your underutilized space metrics is crucial. When looking at space management software, look for options to see historical and predictive analytics to determine how and when you can avoid underutilization.

WHY IS DENSITY IMPORTANT?

This is on everyone’s mind much more than it used to be. When space planners talk about density, they mean the number of people per square foot. But welcoming back students and employees to safe campuses means understanding density. That means real-time occupancy counts but also setting acceptable occupancy standards with new distancing expectations so that people are comfortable in large crowds. Many corporate property management advisors will tell clients to determine a density goal by predicting the number of people utilizing a workspace, and then multiplying it by the average square footage required by each employee (i.e., between 125-250 square feet). 

WHAT DOES PEAK USAGE INFORM?

Peak usage allows facility managers to track which sector of the workplace – or any shared space – receives the most traffic. These space utilization metrics can show which spaces hold the most value at any given point in time.  Lambent do this by collecting real-time data from wi-fi and cameras to provide a historical overlay to show how a space is used over time.

WHAT IS ONE WAY TO MAKE OFFICE SPACE MORE FLEXIBLE?

In the new flexible workspace, everyone is talking about hot-desking – a system that limits the number of desks in the office space. This means multiple employees will use the same physical workstations at different points in the day in order to limit contact and maximize space. To determine if you need a hot-desking option, space managers should have a clear understanding of their space utilization and density figures.

WHAT IS OCCUPANCY ANALYTICS?

In 2022, monitoring occupancy is a top priority for many teams, and understanding what occupancy analytics means will help them get off to a good start. For help defining Occupancy Analytics, we asked Lambent CTO Chris Lord to answer two key questions about it.

Chris Lord: When we talk about analytics in this context, it’s all about understanding patterns of life. It’s understanding how people are using your space over time and then using that information in order to drive business value and decisions.

There are many dimensions that occupancy analytics can inform. There’s the classic operation use; this could be help-desk staffing, security staffing, custodial staffing. Make sure you’re doing it at the right time with the right number of people based on how people are using a space. It can be long-term, like capital planning or deciding whether or not to renew a lease.

Overall it helps inform whether you have too much, or too little space, or the right kind of space… 

The information we extract from patterns of life can inform major spatial decisions in the workplace that ultimately should lead to greater employee satisfaction.

“The information we extract from patterns of life can inform major spatial decisions in the workplace that ultimately should lead to greater employee satisfaction.”

CHRIS LORD, CTO AND CO-FOUNDER, LAMBENT

Lambent employs two layers of analytics. The first takes high-volume real-time sensor streams and disparate data sources and combines them into a cohesive view of people and movement in space. This work relies on a lot of machine learning techniques and models.

The second layer uses that data to understand the patterns of life in space, and to combine it with contextual data (like weather or how space is allocated/reserved/scheduled) to extract insights that can directly drive business decisions about staffing, resource allocation, or space utilization.

HOW DO OCCUPANCY ANALYTICS COMPARE TO DENSITY OR CAPACITY? 

Chris Lord: Capacity is a static measure of how many people a space can support under a set of conditions (varies for an auditorium vs conference room vs coworking vs hallway) and, if unspecified, can be inferred from use and size. 

Occupancy is a point-in-time measure sampled over time and density is a function of occupancy and space or capacity.

Analytics can be done with either occupancy or density because they represent how something changes over time. 

For more on safely reopening offices and workspaces against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis, read the Lambent blog found here.

Lambent uses AI and machine learning to manage crowds, foot traffic, and wait times throughout professional sports venues, higher education institutions, and corporate campuses. To learn more about Lambent connect with our Sales Team at sales@lambentspaces.com.

A new Front Office Sports Special Report highlights this year’s huge hardware supply chain issues as a driving force behind stadium operations teams looking to IoT solutions to meet technology innovation goals.

The report, titled IoTs Impact on the Sports Economy, cites a McKinsey report on the growing influence of the IoT market, and points to a Bloomberg article on the growing number of out-of-stock hardware and technology items. 

Front Office Sports also highlighted the Lambent intelligent software solution, and deployments at premier venues such as Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, as a way for stadium operators to drive value with IoT technology.

Front Office Sports predicts the category of Stadium Intelligence has emerged as one of the top ways IoT will influence the sports and stadium markets.

Here are some additional key excerpts from the report:

• The IoT industry could provide outsized returns in the sports and sports adjacent industries over the next decade.

• Manufacturers and advertisers alike are struggling to deal with the various supply chain issues across the board including truck driver shortages, port delays, and outright factory closures. 
• Lambent provides a direct use case for potential sports and entertainment specific functions. The company’s software allows for smarter decisions related to crowd size, space utilization, security, maintenance, and fan experience while providing easy access to valuable data trends for space management.  

You can read the complete report here, and you can find out more about how Lambent is helping premier customers like the Milwaukee Bucks, LAFC, and the Cleveland Cavaliers harness visitor data and transform their stadiums with deep insights into fan and crowd behavior by scheduling a quick demo.

To learn more about how we are helping partners and clients around the globe, check out this blog from my colleague David Smentek Real World Crowd Intelligence at Your Campus or Venue. 

Curious about how Lambent helps stadiums, corporate real estate, and higher education campuses do more with the data they have? Reach out today to connect with a sales specialist and learn more.

Due to our success in premier sports venues such as the Fiserv Forum and teams such as the Milwaukee Bucks, we are partnered with the Sports Innovation Lab (SIL) to help venues better understand how fans and technology interact with venues. Chris Lord, Lambent co-founder and CTO, is featured alongside SIL stadium partners in SIL’s latest research project – dedicated to using AI to plan, build and expand stadiums.

Hear what Lord has to say about the democratization of data, and how we’re empowering venue managers to make ROI-related decisions relating to crowd management. You can also check out the entire report for key takeaways on how AI is empowering smart stadiums.

SYNDICATED, ‘AI AS INFRASTRUCTURE’, PUBLISHED BY SPORTS INNOVATION LAB, SPONSORED BY INTEL.

WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?

AI is technology that has been and will continue to work in conjunction with humans to improve overall human performance. Artificial intelligence leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind (IBM, 2021). Robert Muehlbauer, Senior Manager of Business Development at Axis Communications described artificial intelligence in its simplest form as using a machine or a computer to do tasks that a human would. The benefits are myriad and significant—with AI and computation, we can make workflows quicker and more efficient. Over the years, popular conceptions of AI and Machine Learning have been shaped, for better or worse, by depictions in popular media such as film, television, games, and beyond.

Sometimes presented as a seemingly endless futuristic possibility space, sometimes presented as a great threat to humanity, AI captivates popular imaginations. Not surprisingly, the realities of AI and ML do not conform to popular media depictions. AI is neither a technological panacea nor an existential threat. AI and ML are computational tools that have the power to make us more efficient and to make us smarter. At the end of the day, AI and Machine Learning exist to make our work and our lives easier and better.

INTRODUCTION

The thrill of standing shoulder to shoulder with other fans, on your feet as the game clock expires, as your team buries the buzzer-beater, is inimitable and irreplaceable. It’s this feeling of shared experience and the “power of togetherness” that keeps live sports, with attendant fans, a primary pillar of the sports industry. The global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 that continues to shake the world has not only forced the sports industry to take a closer look at how we construct and design our live sports entertainment, it has also shaken the confidence of fans who continue to want the power of togetherness but who harbor concerns about the safety of attending live sports. The“return to play” has forced the whole of sports, from the professionals producing the contests to the fans adoring the action, to rethink our priorities and the role technology plays in bringing us all back together.

It is incumbent upon stadia operators and sports properties to change their thinking about the design of fan experience, and new pandemic-generated challenges that need to be addressed to ensure fan health, safety, and security. AI provides a suite of technologies, specific to problem-solving. that will play a foundational role in this change. Today, because of the rapid evolution of AI technologies, we can consider the impact of AI on a larger scale. AI is the future of sports stadium infrastructure—replacing traditional building and repair practices and implementing data solutions to create a live sports environment that is healthier, safer, and more secure for fans. To address the essential needs of fans, sports venues need to reimagine AI technologies as a new form of infrastructure, solving problems that used to be addressed through brick, mortar, pipe, and personnel.

To address the essential needs of fans, sports venues need to reimagine AI technologies as a new form of infrastructure, solving problems that used to be addressed through brick, mortar, pipe, and personnel.

SECURITY

AI and Machine Learning are being implemented in every facet of security. Physical and cyber security will continually be a main focus for venue operators and fans. Knowledge is power, so the more that technology knows, the better it will be able to output improved processes. In return, when the knowledge is made public, fans are able to digest it and change their behaviors to feel more secure. CTO and co-founder of Lambent, Chris Lord, spoke on the democratic nature of data and the importance of understanding the problem, resources, partner companies, and areas to scale in order to be successful. The idea that data is a democracy, and understanding the problem, resources, and partner companies you want to scale can differentiate success.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are no longer “nice to have” technologies in the smart venue network, they are increasingly essential. AI and ML are infrastructure—critical systems that, together and as part of the broader infrastructure of a venue, provide the platform for fan experience.

To learn more about how Lambent helps facilities teams deliver on priorities like this, schedule time with one of our experts today.