What is Barcelona's Espai Barça project, and what role did Crestron play in it?

Espai Barça is the multi-year infrastructure renovation of Spotify Camp Nou, the home stadium of FC Barcelona in Barcelona, Spain, with a seated capacity of more than 99,000. The renovation transforms the historic venue into what the project team describes as a year-round destination, not just a match-day facility. Crestron supplied and integrated the content distribution, collaboration, and control infrastructure across the stadium, unifying more than 2,000 networked devices under a single platform.

Which spaces inside the stadium are covered by the Crestron installation?

The deployment spans the full range of spaces inside Spotify Camp Nou: the Pitch Club hospitality hub, main hospitality areas, the Presidential Box VIP suite, home and visitor locker rooms, a board room, and smaller meeting rooms used by club personnel. Each space type carries different AV and control requirements, from multi-zone audio for match-day crowd management to Microsoft Teams Rooms-certified video conferencing in executive meeting spaces.

Facilities are looking for utilization on more days of the year. How does the system at Spotify Camp Nou handle the switch between match-day and non-match-day use?

Crestron's control infrastructure allows spaces to flip between configurations without manual hardware reconfiguration. The Pitch Club, for example, operates as a primary hospitality hub on match days, with live broadcasting and flexible audio zones, then converts to a hybrid meeting venue on other days. The Presidential Box similarly shifts between VIP hospitality and private executive meeting functions. Scene presets and centralized control, managed through the XiO Cloud platform, handle the transitions across the venue.

What specific Crestron technologies are deployed across the stadium?

The installation draws from several product lines. DM NVX AV-over-IP technology handles video and content distribution across the venue. DM NAX Audio-over-IP technology and DM NAX Audio Edge Devices manage stadium-wide audio, including Bluetooth connectivity in locker rooms that allows players to connect personal devices. More than 1,000 Crestron speakers are installed throughout. AirMedia receivers enable wireless presentation in meeting rooms, boardrooms, and the Presidential Box. 1 Beyond intelligent PTZ cameras and the Automate VX multi-camera speaker tracking solution serve conferencing spaces. The 4-Series control systems anchor executive spaces, while the XiO Cloud platform monitors and manages all 2,000-plus networked devices remotely. Horizon keypads with custom engraving are deployed in guest-facing and meeting spaces.

How does the Microsoft Teams Rooms certification fit into the installation?

The board room and modular executive meeting spaces are built around Microsoft Teams Rooms-certified configurations. Those spaces include multi-camera video conferencing with automatic speaker tracking, voice-activated source switching, wireless presentation, and remote management. Smaller meeting rooms used by club personnel use a simpler configuration, integrated soundbar, ceiling microphones, and one-touch control, with Microsoft Teams software running on an all-in-one video conferencing setup.

What makes this deployment notable for integrators beyond the scale?

The Spotify Camp Nou installation is a public case study in designing a single AV control architecture that must serve genuinely different use cases in the same physical spaces, on a compressed switchover timeline between events. The system has to behave as a broadcast-grade hospitality environment on match day and as a managed enterprise collaboration environment on every other day. That dual-purpose constraint, applied across a venue of this scale, is the design challenge integrators will find most transferable.

Sports Venues · July 15, 2026

Crestron Named Control Infrastructure Partner for Spotify Camp Nou: What the Espai Barça Renovation Reveals for Large-Venue AV Design

FC Barcelona's 99,000-seat stadium now runs on a single Crestron platform, from match day to corporate event.

By AVinBrief Editorial Desk · July 15, 2026

What is Barcelona's Espai Barça project, and what role did Crestron play in it?: Espai Barça is the multi-year infrastructure renovation of Spotify Camp Nou, the home stadium of FC Barcelona in Barcelona, Spain, with a seated capacity of more than 99,000. The renovation transforms the historic venue into what the project team describes as a year-round destination, not just a match-day facility. Crestron supplied and integrated the content distribution, collaboration, and control infrastructure across the stadium, unifying more than 2,000 networked devices under a single platform.
Which spaces inside the stadium are covered by the Crestron installation?: The deployment spans the full range of spaces inside Spotify Camp Nou: the Pitch Club hospitality hub, main hospitality areas, the Presidential Box VIP suite, home and visitor locker rooms, a board room, and smaller meeting rooms used by club personnel. Each space type carries different AV and control requirements, from multi-zone audio for match-day crowd management to Microsoft Teams Rooms-certified video conferencing in executive meeting spaces.
Facilities are looking for utilization on more days of the year. How does the system at Spotify Camp Nou handle the switch between match-day and non-match-day use?: Crestron's control infrastructure allows spaces to flip between configurations without manual hardware reconfiguration. The Pitch Club, for example, operates as a primary hospitality hub on match days, with live broadcasting and flexible audio zones, then converts to a hybrid meeting venue on other days. The Presidential Box similarly shifts between VIP hospitality and private executive meeting functions. Scene presets and centralized control, managed through the XiO Cloud platform, handle the transitions across the venue.
What specific Crestron technologies are deployed across the stadium?: The installation draws from several product lines. DM NVX AV-over-IP technology handles video and content distribution across the venue. DM NAX Audio-over-IP technology and DM NAX Audio Edge Devices manage stadium-wide audio, including Bluetooth connectivity in locker rooms that allows players to connect personal devices. More than 1,000 Crestron speakers are installed throughout. AirMedia receivers enable wireless presentation in meeting rooms, boardrooms, and the Presidential Box. 1 Beyond intelligent PTZ cameras and the Automate VX multi-camera speaker tracking solution serve conferencing spaces. The 4-Series control systems anchor executive spaces, while the XiO Cloud platform monitors and manages all 2,000-plus networked devices remotely. Horizon keypads with custom engraving are deployed in guest-facing and meeting spaces.
How does the Microsoft Teams Rooms certification fit into the installation?: The board room and modular executive meeting spaces are built around Microsoft Teams Rooms-certified configurations. Those spaces include multi-camera video conferencing with automatic speaker tracking, voice-activated source switching, wireless presentation, and remote management. Smaller meeting rooms used by club personnel use a simpler configuration, integrated soundbar, ceiling microphones, and one-touch control, with Microsoft Teams software running on an all-in-one video conferencing setup.
What makes this deployment notable for integrators beyond the scale?: The Spotify Camp Nou installation is a public case study in designing a single AV control architecture that must serve genuinely different use cases in the same physical spaces, on a compressed switchover timeline between events. The system has to behave as a broadcast-grade hospitality environment on match day and as a managed enterprise collaboration environment on every other day. That dual-purpose constraint, applied across a venue of this scale, is the design challenge integrators will find most transferable.

The Take

What does the Spotify Camp Nou deployment tell integrators about designing multi-use AV infrastructure for large venues?

The Espai Barça project is a useful public benchmark for a design challenge the industry is seeing more often: a venue that needs to generate revenue on days when its primary function isn’t happening. The constraint isn’t new, sports facilities have hosted corporate events for decades, but the expectation that the AV infrastructure will handle both modes without visible seams is newer and harder.

Three questions are worth bringing to any large-venue project using this model as a reference.

First, how much of the switchover is automated versus human-driven? Scene presets and centralized control reduce the labor required to flip a space, but the XiO Cloud monitoring layer suggests the system still needs active remote management. Integrators should ask what the staffing assumption is behind the “365-day” operating model, and whether the end user has the in-house AV staff to support it.

Second, what does the 2,000-device network demand from the underlying infrastructure? DM NVX AV-over-IP and DM NAX Audio-over-IP both run on the data network. At this device count, network headroom, VLAN segmentation, and PoE budget are not afterthoughts. Integrators specifying AV-over-IP at venue scale should confirm the network architecture is designed for AV traffic before the AV design is finalized.

Third, how is the XiO Cloud management layer scoped for a venue with multiple space owners? A stadium with hospitality, corporate, broadcast, and team-operations spaces likely has more than one department with authority over their environment. How XiO Cloud user roles and access controls are structured, who can push a firmware update to a Presidential Box touch screen versus a locker room keypad, is an administrative decision the integrator should surface early in the design phase, not after commissioning.

Sources

Signature Stories: Spotify Camp Nou, Crestron Electronics, Inc. (primary document) · Crestron case study page for the Espai Barça / Spotify Camp Nou installation