Reimagine
Football

We are primarily looking for first-class solutions, whether they are from startups, scale-ups, small to medium enterprises, or larger organisations. First-class solutions should be able to be implemented and have the opportunity to be further developed together with us. Participants can sign up on the platform as an individual and submit a solution as an individual or as part of a team/organisation.

We have a dedicated online challenge platform where participants can submit their solutions. During the submission period, special challenge teams comprised of subject matter experts work with participants through the platform to enrich and validate their solutions and determine if they are a good fit to solve our challenges. After the deadline the submitted solutions can be enriched for one additional week. In the period during the online phase and directly after this phase the KNVB, Johan Cruijff ArenA, Ajax, and Eredivisie CV partners select the most promising solutions for the Collaboration Event.

After the Collaboration Event and if a collaboration agreement or purchasing agreement is agreed upon you are invited to deliver and/or to develop your solution, with a KNVB, Johan Cruijff ArenA, Ajax, and Eredivisie CV partner, their subject matter and industry experts and other support.

The selected organisations and their solutions will be awarded with support and cooperation aimed at bringing their solutions to market. The KNVB, Johan Cruijff ArenA, Ajax, and Eredivisie CV will provide them with guidance and access to their facilities (such as venues, infrastructure and platforms) as a testing environment.

During the online phase, participants will gather unique insights from experts that validate, co-develop and evaluate their solutions within a growing smart stadium community, based on true collaboration.

Our ultimate goal is to reimagine football together! This collaboration could take on many forms, like a collaboration agreement or purchasing agreement, having one or more partners from the KNVB, Johan Cruijff ArenA, Ajax, and Eredivisie CV as customers, organising partnerships across the value chain. The rewards are hard to monetise upfront, but the value will be substantial, especially since we are focused on forming long-term partnerships and commercialisation.

We respect ownership of intellectual property rights (IP): your IP remains yours; ours remains ours. What we create together during the process will be our joint IP (yours and ours), unless agreed otherwise beforehand. Before we start creating joint IP, we discuss a high-level arrangement which can range from IP that remains 100% your ownership (and is licensed for usage by one or more KNVB, Johan Cruijff ArenA, Ajax, and Eredivisie CV partners on favourable terms) to full joint development and exploitation.

There is no single best approach to submitting a solution. The quality of the solution is the most important factor. It is important to get people to read your solution in the first place. We recommend that you write a clear and brief abstract or management summary that concretely explains the core of your solution. It is also highly recommended to use images and attachments.

The objective is also to let your solution grow and further develop, together with the KNVB, Johan Cruijff ArenA, Ajax, and Eredivisie CV.

The KNVB, Johan Cruijff ArenA, Ajax, and Eredivisie CV will determine which solutions will be selected. What they will look for, includes:

Fit with the KNVB, Johan Cruijff ArenA, Ajax, and Eredivisie CV organisations and the ‘Reimagine Football’ challenge

The extent to which the proposed solution fits one or more organisations of the KNVB, Johan Cruijff ArenA, Ajax, and Eredivisie CV and positively contributes to the sub-challenge(s)

Ease of implementation and scaling potential

The ease of implementation as well as a short time to implement the solution (partly proven or proven technology is preferred), and the extent to which the solution has potential to scale towards other parts of the stadium, clubs and leagues

Cost-effectiveness

The investment is relatively low and/or has a convincing business case and the solution does not rely too heavily on public resources

Quality and maturity of the team

The experience, capability and scalability potential of the team of the organisation behind the solution

Innovativeness

The uniqueness of the solution compared to other solutions available

Impact

The extent to which the solution contributes positively towards one or more of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals

We will contact you during the online phase if you are selected. We will make the final selected organisations known via email, but we may select promising solutions earlier on. We will contact you for further details on the process.

Those who did not make it to the Collaboration Event will receive a message via email as well. We will keep all participants informed about what’s going on during the remainder of the challenge.

During the Collaboration Event, participants will work closely together with the Reimagine Football experts and partners to analyse the current possibilities of implementation. And, jointly develop a roadmap for further innovative development towards the Trial phase.

Each organisation will get feedback depending during meetings and workshops on the specific needs and development phase of the team. With this feedback, along with the development areas you have identified yourselves, you will work in small groups with our experts. At the end of the event we hope we can start collaborating together or express our interest in collaborating. This will be agreed upon between each other in a collaboration agreement or purchasing agreement.