The SAP Experience Center brought the “new SAP” to life at SAP Sapphire. It guided visitors through the story of a major sporting event—from early planning to game day—and ended with a special souvenir.
Andreas Wendel is very pleased with the outcome: a total of 11,200 visitors explored the SAP Experience Center at SAP Sapphire Orlando and Madrid. The self-contained exhibit drew customers, partners, SAP employees, media representatives, and analysts alike. Across the two identical centers, visitors also joined 123 guided tours.
“The rush of visitors was so great that, in Orlando, the line at times wrapped all the way around the center, which covers roughly 1,000 square meters,” says Wendel, head of Innovation Experience Services at SAP.
Get an impression of the SAP Experience Center at this year’s SAP Sapphire
So what was inside the oversized box in the middle of the show floor? What were visitors willing to wait more than an hour to experience?
Sports create an emotional connection
“This year, our task was to bring the Autonomous Enterprise to life,” Wendel says. “It’s a highly technical topic, and we talk a lot about artificial intelligence, agents, and Joule Assistants.” The team wanted to make tangible what CEO Christian Klein and other members of the Executive Board of SAP SE introduced in the keynote and what was demonstrated in sessions.
Planning began six months before SAP Sapphire, supported by experts from Strategy, Development, and Product Marketing. Over time, more partners, customers, and service providers joined the effort. Wendel estimates that close to 100 people contributed to the concept.
As the narrative thread, the team chose a major sporting event and the theme “From Competition to Collaboration”—a timely fit with the world’s largest soccer tournament taking place across the United States, Mexico, and Canada this year. “With so many technology discussions at SAP Sapphire, sports is a topic that resonates with people emotionally,” Wendel says. “We used a sports event to show how SAP solutions help plan and deliver an event of that scale.”
“For spectators, it’s an experience. But for a mega-event to run smoothly, all equipment and technologies around a stadium must work,” he adds. “We showed how Autonomous Asset Management helps ensure the infrastructure performs on the day of the event.”
A players’ tunnel, pipelines, and a robodog
Let’s take a tour of the SAP Experience Center with Wendel. We enter through a players’ tunnel and arrive in a skybox overlooking an imagined stadium for a major international soccer tournament. The first stop, “Plan the Game,” focuses on the big picture and shows how SAP brings AI, data, and applications together to orchestrate every aspect of a major sporting event.
Wendel explains how SAP solutions support the planning phase: “We show how customers can use our finance and planning solutions well ahead of the event. Agents and Joule Assistants help identify developments early and take action to stay within budget.”
His colleague Pranav Avadhanula, solution advisor for Finance and AI, demonstrates this with a real-world scenario. On a large screen, visitors see how Joule Agents can identify the best providers for the event’s security concept in Mexico and simulate different scenarios—including currency fluctuations between the Mexican peso and the U.S. dollar.
The next station, “Build the Stage,” highlights the work that happens behind the scenes before fans cheer. Modernizing a stadium requires precise planning, budget discipline, and seamless execution. SAP helps orchestrate everything—from staffing and travel to procurement—enabling the venue to be ready on time and on budget, supported by Autonomous Spend, Autonomous HCM, and Autonomous Project Delivery.
Another room focuses on applications that are invisible to visitors—but critical. One scenario in particular stands out and was likely the most frequently filmed by visitors: a dog-shaped robot from partner Boston Dynamics moving along a series of pipelines, automatically detecting leaks with sensors. Once identified and analyzed, the system triggers a digital repair order for the maintenance staff responsible.
“What resonates strongly is that we don’t just show digital solutions,” Wendel says. “We also demonstrate how embodied AI and robotics can support operations in the future—ideally through customer use cases. These physical elements make SAP solutions tangible and help reduce complexity.”
Another popular highlight is the “Hall of Fame,” where key customers are honored with their own trophies. “In Orlando, we had a tour with a customer. When employees saw their trophy, they cheered and took photos like at a Champions League final. That really showed how much detail went into the experience—it was simply incredible.”
More than just a jersey
The visit concludes in the fan shop. Under the theme “Monetize the Moment,” it demonstrates how organizers can generate revenue through merchandise. Visitors scan their SAP Sapphire badge and order a personalized jersey in one of two colors.
They then watch as a machine printed the jerseys with their chosen name and number. A humanoid robot from partner Aimbo Robotics sorts the finished items onto shelves. Despite high demand, jerseys are ready for pickup about two hours later.
The twist: the jerseys include an NFC chip. “If you tap your phone to it, you can access all SAP Experience Center content again,” Wendel explains. “So it’s not just a jersey—it extends the experience beyond the event.”
Wendel emphasizes that while the SAP Experience Center was built for SAP Sapphire, its elements are reused at other events or in one of the numerous permanent SAP Experience Centers. Parts of the setup are also stored for reuse. “Sustainability is very important to us,” he says.
Hard to top
The many months of preparation and the long evenings in the exhibition hall in the run-up to SAP Sapphire clearly paid off. Asked about the feedback, Wendel concludes: “Our concept makes SAP’s full portfolio and industry strength tangible. This year, many people told us: ‘Last year was already great, but you managed to top it.’ And that’s not easy.”
Experience SAP innovation firsthand
SAP Experience Centers bring innovation to life through real business scenarios, interactive showcases, and industry-specific storytelling. Across 31 locations worldwide, SAP connects applications, data, and AI to help turn complex business challenges into tangible solutions.
Interested customers and partners may explore SAP Experience Centers online, book a tour, or get an impression of SAP AppHaus.
This article was first published on the SAP employee portal.
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