Arenas have always been places of spectacle, but increasingly they are becoming immersive environments where technology shapes how events are experienced, not just how they are hosted. Anna Mitchell reports.
For decades, the AV infrastructure inside large venues was largely functional. Screens delivered replays, public address systems ensured intelligibility, and any sense of immersion came primarily from the event itself: the roar of a crowd, the scale of the space, the shared energy of thousands of people in one place. Today, that balance has shifted. Technology is no longer supporting the experience; it is actively constructing it.
That change has been driven by audiences as much as by innovation. The expectations placed on venues have risen sharply, particularly as the competition for attention has expanded beyond physical spaces into increasingly sophisticated digital ones. At the same time those venues are working harder, hosting everything from touring acts to corporate gatherings when matches aren’t being played.
Oliver Brindley, head of strategy at UK provider of LED, content and live production systems ADI.tv, says: “Screens are now an integral and expected part of the experience within stadiums for fans.”
What was once a single scoreboard has become a distributed visual ecosystem. LED surfaces now stretch across seating bowls, wrap around concourses, define entrances and animate façades. Crucially, they are no longer confined to the moment of play.
The LED-lined player tunnel at Burnley FC in the UK, delivered by ADI.tv, forms part of a wider stadium-wide installation that extends immersive content across every stage of the matchday journey
This expansion reflects a broader rethinking of what a venue is. The modern arena is not simply a place people arrive at for a scheduled event; it is a destination designed to hold attention over time. That shift is particularly visible in the way the experience now begins long before spectators take their seats.
Eric Gazzillo, VP of innovation at Quince Imaging, a US-based specialist in immersive visual design and projection for live events and venues, sees this as part of a wider convergence between arenas and themed entertainment.
“Fans are now expecting to be ‘in the experience’ the moment they enter the venue,” he says. “And I don’t mean the arena bowl. Pretty much the moment fans leave the parking garage they’re surrounded by entertainment.”
This blurring of boundaries - between arrival and event, between architecture and content - is reshaping how AV systems are specified and deployed. LED has become the most visible manifestation of that change, but it is not the only one. Projection mapping, long associated with temporary installations and themed attractions, is finding a renewed role within arenas, particularly where flexibility is required or where permanent installations would be intrusive.
“What we’ve been guiding our clients to has been protecting the sanctity of the playing surface,” Gazzillo explains. “Projection can offer a way to augment and add excitement, without impacting the playing area.”
Rather than competing, these technologies are increasingly complementary. Hybrid environments that combine LED and projection are becoming more common, enabled by improvements in brightness, processing and calibration. As Gazzillo notes, many of the technical barriers that once separated the two have diminished, leaving operational considerations - reliability, maintenance, ease of use - as the more pressing concerns.
Those operational realities are becoming central to how immersive environments are delivered. The challenge is no longer simply to install technology, but to ensure it can be used effectively, repeatedly, and at scale.
ADI.tv’s response has been to rethink how venues are managed. Through its Live Venue platform, the company has moved away from decentralised control rooms towards a model where content and systems are operated remotely across multiple sites.
“Whereas we used to send teams of people out to stadiums everywhere, that all happens centrally now,” says Brindley.
This approach addresses one of the key tensions in modern arena design: as systems become more complex, the people responsible for operating them do not necessarily become more specialised, particularly outside top-tier venues. Systems must therefore be designed to be modular, maintainable, and resilient.
At the same time, the integration of these systems is rarely just a technical exercise. The expansion of AV across a venue brings with it a corresponding expansion in stakeholders, from commercial teams and marketing departments to operations and event production.
“The actual content is not that challenging,” Brindley observes. “It’s more about getting the right stakeholders on board, every part of it has a commercial value.”
That content is also becoming more dynamic and responsive, shaped not just by the event itself but by the wider context around it. “It’s reactive as well,” adds Donald Imrie, marketing communications manager at ADI.tv. “You can tailor content to specific moments. We’ve seen venues repackage their LED environments for things like Chinese New Year to engage fans.”
The commercial dimension is impossible to ignore. Immersive technology is not simply an investment in experience; it is also an investment in revenue generation. LED perimeters, ribbon boards and interactive content all carry sponsorship value, often forming a core part of a venue’s financial model.
This dual role, enhancing engagement while delivering return, shapes the way immersive environments are conceived. It also explains why certain elements, particularly visual ones, have been adopted more rapidly. They are easier to monetise, easier to measure, and easier to justify.
Audio, by contrast, has often been treated as a secondary layer, despite its potential to transform how a space is experienced. That is beginning to change.
“For years, it’s been about coverage and intelligibility,” says Anders Jørgensen, project manager and consultant at Danish integrator and consultancy Stouenborg. “But now we’re seeing systems where you’re able to localise and position sound in a much wider perspective.”
The move towards spatial audio - through technologies such as L-Acoustics L-ISA, d&b Soundscape and Meyer Sounds’ SpaceMap Go - represents a fundamental shift in how sound is designed. Instead of being distributed evenly across a space, it can be directed, shaped, and positioned, allowing audiences to perceive it as part of a coherent environment.
The implications are significant. Audio becomes not just a means of communication, but a tool for guiding attention and shaping emotional response.
“When it comes to the tools available to create immersion, audio sits at the very top,” Jørgensen argues.
Image credit: shuttle semera/Shutterstock.com
This perspective challenges the dominance of visual technologies within immersive design. While LED can create spectacle, it can also overwhelm, flooding a space with information and light. Audio, by contrast, operates on a more instinctive level, capable of directing focus and creating intimacy even in vast environments.
That distinction is particularly evident in the redevelopment of Stockholm’s Avicii Arena [a full write up can be found in Inavate EMEA’s August 2025 edition]. Featuring an 84-speaker immersive system, the venue represents one of the most ambitious attempts to bring spatial audio into an arena-scale environment.
“It’s mind-blowing… you have 84 speakers and you’re able to play with them,” Jørgensen says.
Yet the project also highlights the challenges of translating immersive audio into everyday use. Touring productions, constrained by time and logistics, often struggle to take advantage of such systems.
“On a good day, front of house technicians and system engineers have an hour to programme a show. On a bad day, 15 minutes,” Jørgensen explains.
This tension between potential and practicality is one of the defining issues facing immersive technology in arenas. The capability exists, but its adoption depends on standardisation, workflow integration and, ultimately, industry-wide alignment.
“We need some kind of standard if this type of system is to become more widespread,” Jørgensen adds.
From a systems perspective, these challenges are becoming increasingly complex. As arenas evolve into multi-sensory environments, the need for precise coordination between audio, video, and control systems becomes critical.
“Integration is fundamentally a question of synchronisation and system coherence,” says Davide Quarto, solutions engineering manager at Powersoft.
At arena scale, even minor discrepancies in timing can become perceptible. Distributed systems must operate with microsecond-level accuracy, ensuring that audio, video, and physical effects align seamlessly across the entire audience area.
“Large-format LED systems and media servers introduce significant latency,” Quarto notes. “If this is not properly accounted for during the design phase, alignment cannot be achieved later.”
This has implications not only for system design, but for how projects are structured and without proper planning advanced systems will struggle to function as a unified whole.
“In practice, projects encounter difficulties when systems are developed in isolation,” Quarto confirms.
The solution lies in treating the arena as a single, integrated platform, where audio, visual, and control systems are designed together from the outset. In this context, audio takes on a new role. “Audio is increasingly becoming the reference system for both time and space within complex environments,” Quarto explains.
This perspective extends into emerging areas such as haptics, where sound is translated into physical sensation. At projects like Sphere in Las Vegas, haptics – in this case based on Powersoft’s Mover transducer - have demonstrated the potential to extend immersion beyond sight and sound, allowing audiences to feel content as well as perceive it.
“It allows the audience to experience sound not only acoustically, but physically,” says Quarto.
While such technologies remain confined to high-end venues for now, they point toward a future where immersion is defined by the integration of multiple sensory layers, each reinforcing the others.
That future is not without its challenges. Cost remains a significant barrier, particularly for large-scale audio systems which can be harder to monetise. Cultural factors also play a role, influencing how audiences engage with experiences and how venues design for them.
“It’s quite difficult in the UK, people are coming two minutes before kick-off,” Brindley notes. “In the States audiences will go to the arena for a full day out.”
At the same time, the economics of touring and event production place limits on how far immersive technologies can be pushed. Additional equipment, additional time and additional expertise all come at a cost, one that must be justified in a competitive market.
“The technology is there, Avicii Arena proved that, but it’s also a matter of money,” Jørgensen confirms.
And yet, despite these constraints, the trajectory is clear. As technologies mature, workflows stabilise and expectations continue to rise, immersive environments will become an increasingly integral part of arena design.
“We are moving toward unified experiential platforms,” Quarto concludes, “where audio, visual, and physical elements operate as a single system.”
In that context, the arena is no longer just a venue for events. It is an environment designed to shape perception, extend engagement, and create experiences that cannot be replicated elsewhere.
Top image: The Infinity Screen at California's SoFi Stadium shows how LED has become a central architectural feature, creating a shared visual experience for every seat in the venue | Joseph Hendrickson/Shutterstock.com