Gabriel Aguiar

Head of Venue Technology

Gabriel Aguiar is Head of Venue Technology at the Local Organizing Committee of the AFC Asian Cup, which Saudi Arabia hosts in 2027. Venue technology at a major tournament is a field of its own: temporary networks installed at stadiums, hotels and media centres and dismantled weeks later; ticketing and access control systems working under the pressure of tens of thousands within a narrow window; broadcast, timing and results systems that cannot afford a second of interruption; and radio networks for security and emergency services operating in a spectrum-crowded environment. Security in this setting is not a layer added on top of technology but runs through all of it, since access control, surveillance and inter-room coordination all depend on the same infrastructure.