When FC Barcelona approached the upgrade of its home stadium, the club went big. Setting a new standard for the future of sports and entertainment events the Espai Barça project aims to modernize and expand not just the stadium but create a multifacility sports, entertainment, and leisure campus over the expanse of 45 acres. With new spaces for commercial and community purposes and a vision for connected fan experiences, the club is modernizing its IT environment to provide agility, flexibility, and availability while boosting security.

More than a stadium

A stadium is more than a performance space. Winning teams, mega concerts, and the memories fans take home make venues great. When FC Barcelona decided to upgrade its historical home stadium instead of building new, it had bigger dreams, launching a project to transform the venue—and the surrounding neighborhood—to create new experiences that could change the face of entertainment in one of Europe’s premier destinations.

Called Espai Barça, the project covers more than 45 acres and will include an expanded, almost 105,000 capacity stadium, multiple sports fields, a new FC Barcelona headquarters building, a smaller 15,000-capacity venue, a museum, a hotel, and restaurants—all in a park-like campus in the center of one of the world’s most beautiful cities.

“It’s not just a project for the football club, it’s an ambitious project for the whole city,” says Miriam Ferrando, CIO of Espai Barça. “There’s really no reference point for it because nobody has done this before. It’s incomparable.” Ferrando has been leading IT initiatives for the project for several years and is already immersed in the daily operations of turning the club’s vision into reality.

Her recent promotion to CIO has been good for both her and the project because, at its heart, Espai Barça is an international hub for innovation. “This role is really the culmination of my career to date, combining my passion for technology with my love of sports—all within the framework of one of the most iconic football clubs in the world,” Ferrando says.

Under construction, open for business

Navigating the technology strategy during construction has brought its own set of challenges. “The IT department is basically an enabler in this process, ensuring that all systems function correctly 365 days a year, whether it’s a match day or not,” Ferrando says. “But during the building of the campus we have several operational roles that are solely focused on the construction.”

For instance, the team is providing a construction management application that leverages digital twin and building information modeling to ensure precision and efficiency. “We can simulate, optimize, and track the entire construction process,” Ferrando explains.

At the same time, Ferrando and team are building technology into the facilities as they go. From connectivity that will enable mobile apps to IoT sensors that will provide control over building management systems, security, and lighting—it’s all being integrated into the structures as renovations continue. “We are transforming every aspect of the fan experience.

We’re going to power everything from merchandising to hospitality and fan engagement—not just for visitors but also for the remote fans,” Ferrando says. “It’s as much about operational efficiency as it is about delivering fun experiences.”

Data that delivers on a grand scale

Enabling those experiences requires massive amounts of data. “We recognize that data is more than just a resource. We see data as the foundation on which we will build the future and drive our transformation efforts,” Ferrando explains. “It’s how we personalize experiences and build fan engagement.”

In order to deliver on that vision, the team needs a technology foundation that can support any initiative and opportunity that arises. “We need to be able to build anything our team wants to build—applications that integrate into the game experience, streaming in real time—so we need to be able to leverage an infrastructure that is as flexible and scalable as possible,” Ferrando says.

And the scale is grand. “It’s a city inside a city. We need to provide all these services aligned to the needs of the club and the city with a level of excellence that exceeds expectations,” Ferrando offers.

Partners in a new sports experience

To deliver on the promise of the project, FC Barcelona partnered with Hewlett Packard Enterprise to become the official edge-to-cloud partner for Espai Barça. It’s a strategic alliance that will equip the facilities with HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise and HPE Aruba Networking, enabling real-time data analytics and integrated security solutions.

The partnership between HPE and the club will enable the entire Espai Barça campus to offer personalized services and experiences tailored to its fans, setting a new standard for the future of sports and entertainment events.

HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise modernizes the stadium IT infrastructure to provide simplified management of workloads, enhanced automation, and increased data security, agility, and availability.

“For us, HPE GreenLake is a pillar of this whole project. It’s technology, but it’s also sustainability,” Ferrando relates. “And it’s more than that. HPE is not only here as an infrastructure partner. HPE is here as a strategy. It aligns perfectly with the vision of FC Barcelona.”

The strategy for the Espai Barça project began with the two teams—FC Barcelona and HPE digital next advisors—getting together. Armed with FC Barcelona’s vision, HPE advisors showed how the digital fan experience and the new network and compute infrastructure would form the basis for a new IT operating model. A visual framework demonstrated how the solutions integrate from fan experiences and monetization through performance analytics and the cybersecurity trust landscape. 

Private and public cloud flexibility

HPE GreenLake enables the club to have the best of public cloud flexibility and on-premises performance. “These days, it’s essential to bridge the gap with public cloud environments. Not all workloads can reside there, so it’s critical to find the most effective use case for each one—both economically and technically,” Ferrando says.

Now the team has the tools to manage its workloads wherever they make the most sense. “With HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise, we have a managed private cloud solution that gives us the features to unify both private and public clouds, ensuring smooth operations between the two.”

Ferrando also needs critical systems to be online and secure 24×7: “We need to provide the necessary performance and security for our staff as well as visitors, and HPE GreenLake provides the technology for our data governance to run smoothly, giving us protocols for backup, security, and an additional layer of trust for all critical information.”

Getting closer

With a completion date of 2026, one of the project’s first major milestones is swiftly approaching. “We are reopening the stadium before it is 100% complete. It won’t be full capacity, but it will be a great way to show the progress we’ve been making and try out all the technology we’ve been integrating,” Ferrando says.

When completed, the stadium itself will have 15,000 connected devices when it’s empty. “It takes a lot of effort to coordinate the network to offer all the services we want to deliver. But eventually, we’re going to have almost 105,000 people in here on a game day, and they’re all going to connect and interact with us. We have to be confident that we’ve built this correctly, and with HPE we have that confidence.”

For Ferrando and FC Barcelona, it’s a dream coming true. “We are building a space to keep winning. It’s like winning in terms of opening up the neighborhood and the city. It’s a win to be providing greater comfort for the members and fans and gaining international visibility. And for me, it’s like seeing Halley’s Comet. It’s an opportunity that only comes once in a lifetime. I get goosebumps when I think about it, and I think that’s really the experience fans are going to have too.”