Johan Cruijff ArenA wins golden Sabre Award

The Sabre Awards are the Oscars of communication prizes and were awarded at the beautiful Maritime Museum in Amsterdam on May 23. More than 2,000 cases from all over Europe were submitted for assessment, with the Johan Cruijff ArenA having taken home the Sabre Award in the ‘Entertainment’ category.

Johan Cruijff ArenA’s stadium seat replacement project PR and content campaign named ‘Second Life for Stadium Seats’, which was produced alongside Leene Communicatie, was nominated for this award in the ‘Entertainment’ category and ultimately took home the Gold Sabre Award.

You can find out more about the campaign by watching the video below:

Other finalists in the ‘Entertainment’ category were:

• Diablo III: The Haunted Experience Blizzard with Wenderfalck
• The Drama Kitchen-Sky Atlantic with Unity
• Museum of News-1 1 media with Grestodorchuk PR
• Optimus Prime Takes Over the Subway Station-NOS Audiovisuais with Lift World

Further information on the Sabre Awards can be found online at: https://www.holmesreport.com/events-awards/sabre-awards/sabre-awards-emea

The stadium seat replacement project at Johan Cruijff ArenA

In 2017, the 53,000-plus stadium seats in the Johan Cruijff ArenA were replaced, with the old chairs having all been permanently re-used, with some sold through the Ajax fan shop on the website, all gaining second lives.

The €15.3k sales achieved from the sale of the old seats – which were more than 21 years old and needed replacing – all went to the Ajax Foundation.

With the installation of the new seats, the ArenA has been turned completely red and white, fulfilling the long-cherished wish of the Ajax supporters.

It was really important for the ArenA to find a way to process the old stadium seats in a sustainable way. Office organiser Ahrend, Ajax and the ArenA collaborated to sell the old seats: a loose backrest and sitting, which the buyer could convert in a seat themselves; a seat with a base of steel and a seat with a base of wood.

These three variants of the stadium seats went on sale in October. Over 7,000 loose backrests and sittings were sold on the digital fan shop of Ajax. From the other two variants, approximately 3,500 pieces were sold. These new variants were designed by Koninklijke Ahrend bv and socially responsible Presikhaaf school furniture, which produced the seat at cost price.

A portion of the old seats were donated to clubs in the Netherlands, Curacao and Suriname.

Henk Markerink, CEO of the Johan Cruijff ArenA, said:

The red seat sold the best by far – so I suspect we particularly made a lot of Ajax-supporters happy with this project.

 

As one of the most sustainable stadiums in the world, we need to keep our name high. It was a more logical to choose for circularity, in other words sustainable re-use of the seats. We delivered together with Ajax, Ahrend and Persikhaaf a good solution of this, which in addition worked out really well for the Ajax Foundation.

Images, courtesy: Johan Cruijff ArenA

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