In Focus: ADI – Turf More
Following significant investment, Burnley’s historic stadium is now home to one of the biggest digital platforms in European football. The project has been delivered by digital stadium specialists ADI; their Head of Client Engagement, Claire Fitzgerald-Firth highlights the key points from the huge transformation that’s taken place over this season.
Consultancy and Collaboration
This project has been a real collaboration with a customer that has huge ambition for the club and venue. ADI were invited to provide a complete consultation on the stadium, both inside and outside, with a pretty broad brief that focused on improving the experience for fans whilst also creating a more attractive commercial platform for the club partners, both local and national.
From there, we created visualisation videos which helped give Burnley’s team an idea of the impact each of the options would have as well as seeing how they’d look all together. Burnley have been a great customer to work with – they’ve been really open to trying new things and using technology in interesting ways, particularly on the outside of the stadium where we’ve added digital dynamic surrounds to all of the main entrances.
The solution can be broadly split into three main areas:
Within the bowl, we’ve added new UEFA compliant digiBOARD digital perimeter, which is supported by a second tier of camera facing LED in many areas to maximise broadcast commercial value. Added to this are multiple layers of ribbon around the stands, as well as digital signage above vomitory stairwells. And these are supported by two new superwide 32:9 screens providing live match coverage supported by additional engaging content. What was once a busy mish-mash of signage is now a clean digital platform that the club can control and activate as they see fit.
On the outside of the stadium, we’ve added a number of different digital elements in the form of screens, ribbons and wraps around the main entrances, turnstiles and club shop. There are also new screens in the matchday fanzone as well as an advertising screen on the busy crossroads outside the stadium that the club sell commercially on outside of matchdays.
Within the stands, we’ve added a powerful full new IPTV system to the redeveloped hospitality areas and we’ve also completely refitted corporate boxes with full video conferencing facilities, adding value to the non-matchday corporate services that the club are able to offer. We’ll also be installing a large fine pitch LED wall within the soon-to-be-redeveloped Chairman’s Lounge in the next couple of months which will be the final piece of the project.
Superwide 32:9 screens
Increasingly we’re seeing that standard 16:9 screens don’t really cut it in large stadiums anymore. Fans want more than just the live feed. A double-width 32:9 screen offers so much versatility in how you split it between camera and additional content and so much room for creativity and partner brand activation.
Single Platform Control
One of the keys to ADI’s longterm success is that we don’t just provide hardware. The 1,100m2 of LED at Turf Moor is just the (very) visible part of a full stack solution encompassing technology, content and services from ADI’s Displays, Studios and Services Divisions.
Driving the screens is a powerful, fully integrated control solution designed specifically for the club. It encompasses both traditional signage technologies as well as the type of high powered media servers that you’d find driving massive live concert and event productions.
It was really important for us to provide Turf Moor with a fully integrated control solution that allows for granular management of content whilst also being able to co-ordinate content across every screen. We see so many stadia with multiple digital platforms all delivered by different companies that don’t work with one another – and clubs continue to make this same mistake with procurement for new stadium projects.
Our solution allows the club to view all of the digital screens and signage around the stadium as a single platform, creating simple continuity of message to fans, whether that’s club communication or the ability to sell moments of exclusivity across the whole stadium to their commercial partners.
Creative and Live Venue Delivery
ADI’s Studios Division provides a full remote production service, encompassing both creation and management of content across the whole platform. This started with creating and agreeing an overall brand identity to ensure creative consistency across each touch point; following that we’ve now created a large bank of assets that can be utilised at different times both on and off matchdays.
Burnley is the latest club to join ADI’s Live Venue broadcast network, so matchday content is delivered as a full live event production from ADI’s galleries in Preston over dedicated fibre lines.
On a matchday our team create and manage everything. This includes a full pre-match programme that makes use of all of the displays within the stadium bowl to spectacular effect – particularly in the pre-match build up as the teams take to the field to a huge audio-visual show.
ADI Product
The scale of the Turf Moor project is vast – all in all we’re installed around 1,100m2 of LED product – and all of it designed and manufactured by ADI. Aside from the digital perimeter – which is ADI’s UEFA-compliant digiBOARD solution – every screen comes from our new MT series.
MT is a new product which we launched in 2020. We’ve taken 15 years of manufacturing and installation and distilled it into a revolutionary new lightweight tile that is slimmer, more efficient, greener and easier to install and maintain than anything else on the market. It’s made the installation far simpler and is particularly suited for these types of non-standard installations.
We’re giving clubs the ability to consider displays in far more locations than they traditionally would have. Ultimately that leads to more touch points, better communication and greater consistency in the conversations Burnley and their partners are having with fans.
For more information or to discuss your club’s requirements contact ADI on: Tel: 0800 592 346 Email: info@adi.tv or visit: adi.tv