Hockey World Cup 2026: one platform, five brands, 20,000+ participants

Sixteen match days, a sold-out Wagener Stadium and a fan zone packed from early morning until well after the final whistle. The KNHB wanted the Hockey World Cup 2026 to be more than a tournament to watch: the crowd had to take part. And the tournament partners, ONVZ, DHL, Rabobank and HERO, wanted a presence that went beyond an advertising board along the pitch.

livewall provided the interactive platform that powered it all. One set of modules, five brand environments, sixteen days live.

A tournament like this doesn't give you a second chance. The activations had to work in packed stands with patchy signal, for fans who already had their phones in hand and about three seconds of patience. At the same time, there were as many brand interests as there were partners, each with its own brand identity, its own goals and its own data and privacy requirements.

So the challenge was twofold: one technical foundation that held up for the entire tournament, and five activations that felt so different that the crowd never experienced them as variations on the same thing.

The KNHB received a tournament licence for our interactive modules, with a central account in the World Cup branding. It includes everything you need on match day: polls, quizzes, the ContentWall and the Fancam, all controlled live from a single remote.

Fans scan a QR code and they're straight into the activation. No app, no download. The production team puts the activation on the screen in the fan zone or the stadium, and the operator builds their own show: question by question, poll by poll, photo by photo. Want to run a poll on the player of the match halfway through the second half? Just create it on the spot and put it live.

A key part of the setup: each brand activation runs in its own environment, with its own design, its own data processing and its own data processing agreement. That keeps brands and data strictly separated. For partners like ONVZ, who keep a close eye on how third parties use data, this was a hard requirement.

We were on site for the first match days and trained the KNHB crew, so they could run the rest of the tournament on their own.

ONVZ: ContentWall in the warm-up zone
In the warm-up zone, fans submitted a selfie or supporter photo through an ONVZ-branded page. The photo then appeared in a triptych on the screens, including the big screen in the stadium. We deliberately kept registration minimal: nickname, accept the privacy statement, take a photo, done. Afterwards, fans could click through to a partner page with more about ONVZ and hockey. Moderation ran live via the remote.

DHL: Doorcam with Fancam and prize draw
The crowd favourite. Three closed DHL doors appear on the screen. Behind each door is a live camera feed of a fan in the stands, and the operator switches feeds on and off as the doors open and close. On the presenter's cue, the elimination round begins: one by one, participants drop out until only one is left. That fan wins and collects the prize in the fan zone, or has it delivered to their seat by a DHL courier.

That interplay between screen, presenter and crowd is what makes the concept work: 2,732 logins, 2,582 unique participants and 5,098 Fancam participants across the match days.

Rabobank: GemCam with fish-eye
The GemCam is the ContentWall in Rabobank colours, with a custom fish-eye effect over the image and the GemCam frame and hockey ball as separate overlays. Technically a brand-new feature, which we built and rolled out during the tournament.

HERO: Wheel of Heroes
A custom-built wheel of fortune for motorcycle brand HERO, with its own screen at the HERO stand in the fan zone. Fans spin the wheel on their own phones, and the winner screen shows who takes the main prize, announced by the presenter. At the stand, a staff member checks winners off in the back end. We set the prize distribution carefully, so that every prize actually went out to the crowd each day and every day could start fresh with a new session.

Hitster LIVE: Seniors theme day
On the Seniors theme day, we ran Hitster LIVE in the fan zone: the music guessing game where the crowd, phones in hand, guesses which year a song came from. Singing together, guessing together and watching the score climb on the big screen together.

• 20,000+ unique participants across all activations combined

• 5,098 Fancam participants and 2,582 unique participants in the DHL activation alone

• Sixteen consecutive days live, with five brand environments running side by side

• A secure data export to the rightful owner for each activation, after which all data on our side was deleted

The biggest lesson wasn't in the technology but in the staging. With five activations running side by side, QR fatigue sets in fast: everything gets scanned, but nothing stands out anymore. Our advice to the organisers, and by now our standard approach, is to put one brand front and centre per match or per day. That way every activation becomes a moment instead of one option in a row.

And the concept that landed hardest is also the one most in demand: since the World Cup, the DHL setup has become a blueprint for other sports federations that want to give their partners something that really gets the crowd moving.