Manu has agreed to go to the soccer match. He doesn’t know if his nephew will go in the end because he hasn’t responded, but it’s not necessary, it’s not bad to hang out with him for a while either. The neighbors of the seats are enough to have a good time. It is not a decisive match, nor is it a mere formality. Manu likes to go to soccer, he disconnects, he relaxes.
Manu drives by car listening to the radio and doesn’t know where he’s going to park, but he more or less thinks he knows where he can do it if he has some time. He searches his APP if there are available parking lots and sees where there are traffic jams. After a while he finds a spot about 10 minutes walk from the stadium. After parking and heading to the field, he puts on his helmets and opens the APP of his team, that of various media and his social network profiles. He is getting closer. He wants to be informed and share it. He thus feels accompanied and the walk is more pleasant.
As you get closer, the atmosphere is warmer. Sales stalls and bars bathe the annexes to the enclosure. Manu is still looking for information about the match. About his team and something about the rival. And by the way, he always buys something to eat before entering.
Up to this point, the Club has managed to attract Manu and thousands of other people near the venue, it has fed his social networks and web pages; the media and thousands of very attractive and well-measured services distract Manu before he arrives. In fact, Manu has incorporated other external elements to the venue and the Club, such as buying trinkets at the usual stall or sharing information that makes him feel comfortable and informed.
Audiovisual technology begins to show its face from the moment the stadium is glimpsed in the distance. Colored lights, LED screens, video mapping and concerts are elements that enliven the venue while through digital signage the flows of visitors can be directed, accommodating them as appropriate and avoiding crowds. These characteristics must mitigate possible inconveniences of the installation, such as parking or access.
Entering the stadium must be better than being on the street. The Club, taking advantage of its capabilities and trying to maximize performance, has created a new way to exploit it, in addition to continuing to meet the demands of sports competitions (increasingly complex) and trying to make its capabilities more flexible so as not to limit exploitation opportunities.
It is necessary to minimize the tasks that compromise the stadium without generating value, reducing the unavoidable times. The capacities of the installation must be dimensioned, avoiding investments in events whose amortization exceeds four years. The visitor should be offered more than just a snack at a reasonable price. There must be space for everyone: and the audiovisual tools allow this versatility.
It hasn’t been difficult for Manu to get there, but it’s always a bit difficult to access. It is a somewhat uncomfortable and even stressful process. In this case there is a setback, the access door has changed. A signal on a screen indicates his new door. Nothing happens, he is very close, although there is a queue.
The potentiality of the space should not be trivialized: its capacity, its accesses, circulations, evacuation plans and the possibilities offered by its capacity. These are fundamental questions to analyze and program. A spectator must trivialize his journey from the very door of his house to his seat and out of the stadium to his next stop. All this time, the director of the show has the responsibility to offer the spectator the appropriate show and meet his expectations.
Once Manu enters the room, the corridors, rows, sectors and vomitories are concepts that are difficult to internalize. After access control, digital signage and lighting are two technologies that allow Manu to be informed and wrapped up in a new context, differentiating him from those who are not in the pavilion through content and services. Epic music, light and videos make you enter a new stage. Along the way, he will also be informed of the basic details as well as his regulations, and in the process, commercial campaigns adjusted to his profile can be launched.
All this technology, in short, is a typewriter in the hands of a creative team.
The most recent and already internalized revolution is that this typewriter has become a computer. Complex services can be managed with overwhelming simplicity thanks to IP technology, greatly professionalizing this management and operation. Accurate information is available in real time thanks to cameras, acoustic probes, access controls and the reading of consumption at the bars, for example. The decision-making processes are simplified, synthesized and also allow truly spectacular adjustments and modifications to be made.
When Manu leaves the vomitory and crosses the stairs, he finds the stadium lights pointing at the pitch. A video scoreboard holds the highest place, alternating epic videos with live images and accompanied by lighting, a concert by a music group that will provide entertainment before the match is wrapped. Manu takes a photo on those stairs and sends it to his social networks.
As for the show, a few predefined commands must be adapted to the programmed instructions and to the exact moment in which the action must be carried out, ensuring that the audiovisual show goes at the right pace. These commands must be able to be done without ties or complexes, since the show changes each event.
For example, the show is one more instrument of the event in all its breadth, sometimes it will have more presence than others, but it will always go to the beat. Other instruments could be, for example, the public, advertising or the party itself.
In this harmony, THE audiovisual CONTENT must be adapted to each moment and be spectacular in its proper measure. Always according to its corresponding support. Technology lives on content and vice versa. It can’t be done
propose a spectacular technological development if there is not a creative team that puts it to the test in each show to adapt it as appropriate. Any technological investment must engage a creative investment. Looking for an example, it is like having a canvas, the paints, the brushes, but not a painter.
The game is about to start and Manu is sitting in his seat. He is watching the players warm up when his nephew shows up. At that moment, the images of the warm-up, videos of the best plays, and the music roars in the Stadium appear on the video scoreboards. When the players leave the field of play, the lights of the Stadium go out, which seems to shine through the cameras of mobile phones.
A few spotlights focus on the center of the field of play and the line-ups begin. Videos and music accompany the moment. Manu’s nephew takes out his mobile phone and records the video markers. On the phone, Luis quickly looks at that line-up and discusses his opinion with his nephew and his neighbors. After that, the players jump onto the field of play and journalists, cameras and photographers focus all their attention on the true protagonists of that day.
Manu wants to see the repetitions, he wants to have data that allows him to confirm his opinion with his neighbors, and he uses his mobile phone to ratify the information through multiple channels, and to tell his friends through social networks that it is a great day for spending it by surprise next to his nephew. Meanwhile the party begins.
In this sense, the Club must comply with a series of regulations. They are common to all the teams in that competition, and vary according to the phase being played. These regulatory frameworks also stipulate penalties in the event of non-compliance. The strictest rule, and the best detailed, is the one that governs a Champions League final, an event that takes approximately a year to mount from its first approaches and that has a faithful reflection of the venue in which it is going to be held. The minimum characteristics of each discipline are detailed: lighting, digital signage, CATV, closed circuit television, public address system, giant screens, perimeter LED screen, scoreboards or internet connection.
They must also have the rooms required by the competition, such as a press room, mixed area, hospitality area, or the necessary offices for displaced personnel and the delivery of accreditations.
Likewise, the pre-installation installation must be available due to the technologies related to sport. The Intel 360 system, the hawk eye, mediacoach or the VAR can be some of these examples.
In all cases, given the size of the facilities required and the necessary quality parameters, the maintenance processes due to matches are complex and highly professional processes. Therefore, they must be mechanical and programmable, as well as periodically tested. The production start-up of a pavilion for a match must have protocols that simplify the enormous number of elements to be verified with the necessary guarantees, and in the possible time.
In this way, a great return is obtained in the capacity for assimilation, reaction and decision.
At the end of the game the stadium does not rest. You have to do an analysis of the event and prepare it for the commercial events that are scheduled for the following days.
To do this, you have to change the chip and identify the inefficiencies; costs that must be addressed without obtaining added value in return or that condition the assembly or disassembly. In the case of stadiums, some technologies such as Arena LED lighting, lighting grids (truss), digital signage, pre-wired installations or safe power supply have been great improvements for the assembly and disassembly of events, lowering costs and improving pavilion performance.
The elasticity that a venue needs to address commercial and sporting events has its breaking point in the effect of one on the other.
In conclusion, a sports venue is a multidisciplinary and elastic space where the Broadcast and Audiovisual industries are condemned to understand each other. Where the audiovisual market and the Broadcast must be actively understood as a starting point.
It is a venue where the maintenance routines and the operation of the equipment must be very well aligned and its professionals accustomed to living an event that never ends.
