“The ball is round, and halftime lasts 20 minutes.” That's how we opened our pitch at Hamburg's Volksparkstadion on October 27. By the end of the afternoon, the jury had named VisioLab the winner of the Stadium Experience category.
It was the first Tech & Innovation Day hosted by Bundesliga club Hamburger SV (HSV). Ahead of the club's German Cup (DFB-Pokal) match against Eintracht Frankfurt, startups, partners and members of the HSV Business Club met in the stadium's VIP area.
A new format inside the stadium
The format was developed by Dr. Sebastian Flegr, HSV's Director of Strategy, Innovation & Digital, and brought to life together with Nico Lumma and Christoph Hüning of Hamburg-based NMA.vc.
More than 70 startups applied and nine made the final. They pitched in three categories: Stadium Experience, Sustainability & Responsibility, and AI Tools & Smart Solutions. Each team had three minutes on stage, followed by questions from the jury.
Around 150 guests attended. The program also featured a welcome address by Dr. Melanie Leonhard, Hamburg's senator for economic affairs, and talks from NXP, Prodware and HSV head scout Sebastian Dirscherl. On the panel, HSV board member Dr. Eric Huwer and Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Beate Heinemann, head of the DESY research center, discussed Hamburg as an innovation hub.
Our pitch: a problem every fan knows
Officially, a soccer halftime lasts 15 minutes. But fans who grab a beer and a bratwurst at the break are often still in line under the stands when play resumes. Fifteen minutes quickly turn into twenty.
That's exactly what we built VisioLab for. Guests place their items on the tray, and our AI recognizes everything in real time, no barcodes needed. From grab to go in under ten seconds.
In our pitch, we showed how this already works on every game day in NFL, NBA and MLS venues, including for the Orlando Magic, Inter Miami CF and the Atlanta Falcons. Our goal: bring the same experience to the Bundesliga.
According to Hamburg Startups, those references from US pro leagues were decisive for the jury. The other finalists in our category were Autonomo from Hamburg and Road2Gig from Oldenburg.
Our first Bundesliga jersey
There's a wall of jerseys in our office in Osnabrück. Each one stands for a stadium where our team brought VisioLab to the fans, from LA to Auckland.
One was always missing: a Bundesliga club. Now an HSV jersey hangs right in the middle. Less a trophy, more a reminder of who we build for.
Thank you
Thank you to Dr. Sebastian Flegr, Dr. Eric Huwer, Marius Westhoff, Mitja Scheffler and the entire HSV team for opening the doors of the Volksparkstadion to startups. Thank you as well to Nico Lumma and Christoph Hüning of NMA.vc, and to partners Sparda-Bank Hamburg, Prodware and NXP.
A big thank you goes to the jury: Daniel Könnecke, Jan Henri Kalinowski, Dr. Miriam Putz, Beate Heinemann, Dr. Paul Elvers, Sina Gritzuhn and Nichlas Walsted. And congratulations to COBACK and #IAMPLASTICFREE on winning the other two categories.
“Thank you to HSV and Nico Lumma for this initiative. It was a great evening with an inspiring audience, and we had a lot of fun. What is already game-day reality in US stadiums is what we now want to bring to the Bundesliga,”
says Tim Niekamp, CEO and Co-Founder of VisioLab.
What's next
We're taking a lot of great conversations home from Hamburg, and we're looking forward to everything that lies ahead. Our pitch closed with a line that holds for whatever comes next: We count every moment to make moments count.
Read more about the day from HSV and Hamburg Startups (both in German).
