Learn how we built and scaled our Games Management System on AWS to support the latest Pan and Parapan American Games.
Benefits
| 109,000 registrations managed | 74,000 accreditations managed |
Overview
At Bornan Sports Technology, we provide solutions to manage some of the largest and most complex sports events in the world. Organizers for such events need to manage scheduling, athletes, volunteers, accreditations, catering, and more.
Today, we offer organizers a software-as-a-service solution: our Games Management System (GMS), with customizable modules designed to handle key areas all in one platform. GMS is built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides the performance, security, global reach, and reliability that major events need in a management system.
With AWS, we successfully supported the 2023 Pan and Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile, and will support the 2026 Asian Games in Japan.
Opportunity | Using AWS to Scale Complex Sports Event Management
Bornan Sports Technology was founded in 2017 with the vision of building event management systems for sports events using scalable cloud technology. Our GMS, built in the cloud on AWS, provides all the backend management tools that local organizing committees (LOCs) need to run complex multisport events. Today, GMS includes a wide range of customizable modules for managing registrations and accreditations, access control, entry qualifications, arrivals and departures, VIPs, catering, uniforms, volunteers and workforce, accommodation, and more.
As we’ve expanded GMS beyond its original two modules, we’ve continued to integrate more AWS services to meet our growing needs for scalability and security. We chose AWS for its reliability, scalability, cost management, and global infrastructure, as our Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, José Manuel Domínguez, explains:
“GMS is a critical element in delivering an event, so we cannot be down for longer than minutes or it is a complete disaster. In 8 years of using AWS, we’ve had virtually no downtime or disruption for clients.”
Solution | Managing the Pan and Parapan American Games Using GMS on AWS
Backed by the scalability of AWS, we successfully delivered our GMS to manage the 2023 Pan and Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile. The event involved over 7,000 athletes, 20 countries, 41 committees, 58 sports, and over 100 sessions in 21 days. For the 2023 Pan American Games, GMS managed over 109,000 registrations, 74,000 accreditations, 23,000 arrivals and departures, 375,000 access control readings, and 35,000 volunteer registrations. The 2023 Parapan American Games added an additional 35,000 registrations, 32,000 accreditations, 6,000 arrivals and departures, and 102,000 access control readings.
To serve geographically disbursed users for this event, we relied on Amazon CloudFront, a service for securely delivering content with low latency and high transfer speeds. “Using Amazon CloudFront distribution, we could deliver our service with high availability to people from all over the world, ” says Marcos Millán, CTO of Bornan. Bornan also makes the most of AWS Regions to provide services at events around the world. For example, for an event hosted in the Middle East, Bornan ran GMS in a geographically proximate AWS Region to satisfy the LOC’s data compliance requirements.
We use AWS services to boost the security of its solutions and comply with data protection regulations. GMS handles personal information, including medical data for athletes and accreditation information that governments use to deliver visas. Following AWS best practices, we’ve implemented security features in Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53, a reliable and cost-effective way to route end users to internet applications. It also uses AWS WAF, which protects web applications from common exploits. As our CTO, Marcos Millán, puts it:
“AWS provides state-of-the-art security in the cloud, and we get the most out of it. Amazon Route 53 in particular is an incredible service that provides 100 percent of its service-level agreements.”
To handle scale, we use Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Auto Scaling—a service for adding or removing compute capacity—to raise new instances when demand is high and end them when demand is low. The system can launch new instances in 35–50 seconds, which gives us the flexibility to optimize costs by only paying for the resources it uses. We also save an additional 50–70 percent of compute costs using Amazon EC2 Spot Instances, which let users take advantage of unused Amazon EC2 capacity in the AWS Cloud.
“Having the ability to deploy our systems quickly using AWS means that we can reach some clients and projects that would otherwise be impossible, ” says Dominguez. Internally, we improve efficiency by reviewing code using Amazon Q Developer, the most capable generative AI–powered assistant for software development. “The less time we spend on technology, the more time we can spend with our clients, complementing the skills or knowledge that the LOCs might need,” says Dominguez. This approach supports our mission of not only delivering exceptional events but also strengthening local organizations.
Outcome | Delivering New Features in GMS for the 2026 Asian Games
Following our success at Santiago 2023, we will be supporting the 2026 Asian Games in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. This event is set to be one of the largest multisport events in the world.
Our GMS is constantly evolving, as we customize the functionality for each event based on customer feedback. For example, we are now using AI to enhance and streamline key operational workflows. By integrating AI capabilities into its systems, we can automate critical decision-making tasks, reducing manual effort and processing time. That approach significantly accelerates complex processes like accreditation, especially in scenarios involving hundreds of thousands of participants.
As our Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, José Manuel Domínguez, explains:
“We’re always aiming to go to the next level on our products, but the fact is that in only 8 years, Bornan has been able to close deals with a list of major organizations, and we are going to be managing the largest multisport event in history with the 2026 Asian Games. I think that that speaks for itself on the quality of our event delivery using AWS.”
Managing 109,000 Registrants and 23,000 Arrivals Using AWS with Bornan Sports Technology