Commonwealth Stadium, Edmonton, in Canada has partnered with OnePlan to create a fully interactive Venue Twin of its stadium. With its rich history hosting multiple sports and entertainment events, it’s now planning for the future with an interactive digital twin opening huge operational and commercial opportunities.
We spoke to Jason Fesyk, Supervisor for Stadium and Major Events Facilities, about how Commonwealth Stadium’s Venue Twin is a game-changer for integrated planning, sales and comms, plus its bid to be a host venue for the FIFA World Cup 2026.
Firstly, what is Venue Twin?
VenueTwin is OnePlan’s new solution that unlocks the real value in venues. A fully interactive, centimeter accurate digital twin of any venue, it provides huge operational and commercial benefits. Stadiums and arenas can boost ticket sales with the most advanced SeatView. And they can attract advertisers and sponsors with SuiteView, plus show how signs and advertising will look in any position. Any item can be easily changed and moved, with the highest quality customer walk-throughs now available instantly
"Venue Twin is ideal - it gives us a forward view into what our venue will look like.”"
Jason Fesyk
Commonwealth Stadium, Edmonton
This can all be done with seamless integration between the Venue Twin and other OnePlan functionality including 2D, satellite and CAD. “Covid has fast-tracked event and venue technology. What our clients were forecasting in a few years’ time, they’re now asking for now. That’s why we’ve created Venue Twin,” says OnePlan CEO Paul Foster.
For Jason Fesyk at Commonwealth Stadium, it brings instant benefits. “This is a game-changer. Coming from an event background, I’ve got powerpoint slides, lots of different dot plans, spreadsheets that don’t integrate. As a collaborative system OnePlan was attractive for us. Venue Twin is ideal – it gives us a forward view into what our venue will look like.”
Adapting the stadium for Sports and Entertainment Events
Commonwealth Stadium, Edmonton hosts a range of sports and entertainment events, that’s included the 2015 women’s football World Cup, to concerts for David Bowie and Beyonce. As such, Jason’s team often needs to quickly adapt the stadium.
“There’s a lot going on in our complex all the time: outside of the stadium itself, there are parking lots, a 5,000 seat soccer stadium nearby, a fully operational recreation centre, and so on. The opportunity to integrate our environment and create a Venue Twin so that we can see operationally what it’s going to look like is a pretty big move for us.”
“Having OnePlan’s Venue Twin allows us that flexibility and gives us the opportunity to ensure the venue is prepared and ready for the next event it hosts,” says Jason.
The Venue Twin is accessed and controlled within OnePlan, meaning seamless integration to instantly switch between 2D and 3D modes. Jason can interact in either mode, and the hyper-realistic visualizations allow for incredible fly-throughs of the stadium from any angle. This includes defining television broadcast views. Infrastructure, signs and branding can all be easily changed by the user, without the need for CAD drawings to be updated.
"Having OnePlan’s Venue Twin allows us that flexibility and gives us the opportunity to ensure the venue is prepared and ready for the next event it hosts.”
Jason Fesyk
Commonwealth Stadium, Edmonton
Venue Twin as a Marketing Tool
“VenueTwin has so many useful tools,” Jason continues. “The planning side is one thing, but we can use this as a marketing piece as well.”
SeatView improves the fan experience when buying tickets, providing a fully interactive fly-through of a stadium, showing seats locations and views, as well as the nearest facilities and concessions.
"Venue Twin gives sponsors a much better view of what their brand’s going to look like in our venue"
Jason Fesyk
Commonwealth Stadium, Edmonton
With Venue Twin, Jason and his team at Commonwealth Stadium have been able to “assess usable space and areas to build out compounds that aren’t currently there. Being able to build out different set-ups for sports and concerts provides us with so many more possibilities for how we envision our stadium in any future state.”
These can be easily shared with event promoters, sponsors and advertisers for a hyper-realistic view of what the venue will look like in any scenario. “It gives sponsors a much better view of what their brand’s going to look like in our venue,” explains Jason.
World Cup 2026 Candidate Host City
Commonwealth Stadium, and the City of Edmonton, are hoping to be a host venue for the FIFA Men’s World Cup 2026. As part of their bid to the United 26 organising committee, they’ve used Venue Twin to show the changes they’ll make to the stadium and how signage will appear.
“We’re very excited to be using Venue Twin to show what our stadium will look like in 2026. We’re using OnePlan and Venue Twin to meet FIFA standards. We can take our 2D plans, and then show a real-time, realistic virtual walkthrough of the stadium in 3D.”
This innovation has enabled Edmonton to take a significant step forward in being able to visualise the venue’s future state in a digital twin, for its pitch to FIFA and all stakeholders for the 2026 World Cup.
The partnership between Commonwealth Stadium and the City of Edmonton brings potential to integrate other venues in the city by using OnePlan. Training venues, fan sites and any other venue can be created in a fully interactive metaverse environment, meaning the city can visualise and plan ahead with ease and accuracy.
"The opportunity to integrate our environment and create a Venue Twin so that we can see operationally what it's going to look like is a pretty big move for us.”
Jason Fesyk
Commonwealth Stadium, Edmonton
Quick to create, providing long-term benefits
Jason has found the process to create the Venue Twin quick and easy. “It has been an amazing integrative piece, very quickly they created our Venue Twin. I’m very impressed with what the OnePlan team has done.”
To create a Venue Twin of your stadium or arena, contact us today.
