Tunisia is a developing country with a high creative technology potential. For cost efficiency and quality standards, many European companies outsource engineering and development in Tunis. Local skills are therefore mainly used for foreign needs rather than local purposes.

There are no restrictions in developing new technologies and the Government encourages it. But local investments remain very rare as they are expensive.

Context:

2 years after the Arab Spring, tension amongst the Tunisian remained. For security reasons, the Government decided that all professional Football League games would be played without any audience in stadiums.

For the year's most important game, Historical football team C.S Hammam-Lif needed its fans back.

So we created the 12th Man. An app that connects fans to 40 speakers inside the stadium allowing them to support their team while watching the game live on TV.

A simple tap on sound icons is instantly turned into powerful support: cheering, clapping, drumming, singing... The more fans press on the icons, the louder the sound in the stadium.

The 12th Man technology has been released to the public on March 31st 2013.

The app uses four technical interventions at the same time:

• 2 Client Applications : Android, Microsite

• Server and data services.

• An administration application.

• Sound Installation in the stadium.

Operation:

When pressing a sound icon, the action is recorded by the service that connects the client application with the administration application (exact date in milliseconds).

As a result, the client receives a return signal containing statistics on sounds played live in the stadium. This is visually represented by a spectrum on the user's screen.

The signals are intercepted at the stadium in a period not exceeding 200 milliseconds and are then interpreted and played on the stadium speakers. The size of the signal on the network does not exceed 100 bytes.

Before being out on the stadium speakers, sounds go through a sound processing unit to reproduce exactly a stadium atmosphere.

The more the administration application receives a specific sound signal, the more the sound volume is increased and other sounds decreased. This treatment is carried out simultaneously for all sounds, volumes are recalculated each received signal. Equalizers represent the volume of each sound playing in real time.

The administration application also allows manual control of sounds and volumes in case on losing connection with the services.

On the microsite, the game was broadcasted live in streaming mode and a widget displayed in real-time the number of clicks and the number of people using the app.

The 12th man app made Headline news. Energized by the support of their fans, C.S Hammam-Lif won by 1-0, securing their place in the league. In a stadium with the capacity of 12.000, the app brought together 91.300 fans, with 1.2 million others watching the game. A virtual experience became real and turned football into a real event again.

The technology solved a local and temporary problem. Discussions are at stake to implement it to the Basketball and Handball League. But the goal is to implement it to all football games for the visiting team fans who can't always travel to watch the games.