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Installation Europe Magazine
July 2007
Get Sporty
Sport is increasingly becoming secondary to the other sources of revenue for the stadium. The considerations from the entertainment side influence the technical solutions installed in these arenas, as Joy Zaccaria reports.
A sports fan needs to be fed, provided beer, and a safe environment to sit and watch the spectacle on the field. This has been consistent throughout history. In the current market of audio and video, that fan must also be exposed to branding and strategic products for sale and as much news from other games and the outside world as possible – in addition to the bratwurst. Just as the fan must be multi-tasking, for many of the new stadia built over the past few years in Europe – particularly for football and ice hockey – doing double duty as an entertainment venue is becoming standard. All of this requires standardised audio and video running on straightforward networks that are easy to maintain. This benefits the arena operator as well as the integrator who sells his very lucrative service contract.
With the capabilities for audio and video delivery to serve many functions from announcing the plays, to reinforcing a concert, to automatically designating evacuation routes in case of emergency, stadia can accommodate varied groups of people. As such, European stadia are approaching a time when sports become secondary to other sources of revenue such as corporate events, restaurants, conferences, rentals of VIP boxes, hospitality arenas, or guided tours through the building.
Felix Alpstäg is the head of sales, installation market at Dr.W.A.Günther Audio Systems AG in Erlenbach, Switzerland. He finds that an integrator preparing a bid for a large or small stadium would be well served to keep components standardised and streamlined. “What is more and more important,” says Alpstäg, “is the integrators rely on a system or network with as few interfaces as possible. If you have a system that requires many different types of software to maintain it, then it gets more complicated.”
At the 32,000-seat Stade de Suisse, designed by Dr. W.A. Günther Audio Systems AG, Harman’s HiQnet simplified the system from the first consulting plan stage to the aftersales support for Alpstäg. “With the same software, we have access to all amplifier racks and DSP units,” he says.
The Stade de Suisse building is designed for football and also has a multi-purpose concept. The infrastructure offers the stadium’s future event management a platform for the organisation of modern events such as festivals, concerts, bike or motorcycle- cross races, corporate congresses and conferences even available for rental for a few days. This year Genesis is playing at Stade de Suisse.
Looking at the bigger picture, before deciding on what the components will be used, it is important to determine how they will fit together. “Integrators need to ‘network’ with the phone/satellite companies to arrange for the arena’s system network,” says John Wiggins, VP of Community Professional Loudspeakers. “The goal is for everything to become an IP product on the network. Those that provide networks – the phone and satellite companies – are vying to be in buildings as the backbone provider. The better a system integrator can partner with those people, the better they can position themselves.”
Everything goes back to the IT department, so with enough bandwidth on the network it is possible to stage everything in a consistent way. “Whether they are speakers or microphones or security cameras or anti-terrorist detection equipment or ways to address security such as alcohol consumption in the audience and crowd control, it all wants to be standard IP stuff,” says Wiggins. This is also important for remote monitoring. With prices falling for the fiber or copper, it pays for a building to install additional networks at initial construction even if they are not used yet.
In Straubing, Germany, Oliver Sahm is the project and sales manager for permanent installation in Europe at Bosch Communications Systems. Sahm’s experience in arena- installation consists of initiating the concept behind entertainment uses and voice evacuation along with background music and paging all in one complete systems solution at some major multi-use venues created for the World Cup last year: the Allianz Arena in Munich and the Olympic Stadium in Berlin.
For operation, he sees the DSP capabilities becoming more important regarding safe operation and quick and easy maintenance. “It makes life much easier to get a detailed picture of a 12-inch woofer in one of the clusters boxes and see if it is becoming defective in the near future,” says Sahm. “You can call for some service or maintenance before it becomes an audible fault. This makes life easier and more safe for the operator.”
Audio entertainment has to provide clear sound and boost the excitement level to keep the sports fan more involved. “Simultaneously you have broadcast direction, both in- house and via network television, radio, cable, satellite, internet services, all tied in to the sports venue,” says Community’s Wiggins. “You have in-house directors that control the video and the streaming and the digital ribbon signage for information as well as advertising, so they’re selling goods at the same time.”
Broadcast is a much more complicated concept now with mobile phones and the internet adding to the mix of ways a sports fan can keep up with the scores. “As everything is part of the digital integration, you see more access to the information going out via the internet,” says Wiggins. “Via streaming or the mobile phones, these all represent revenue streams.”
Revenue from video is more readily available for an arena due to the falling prices on LED displays and the prevalence of video sponsors. At Daktronics GmbH, John Mette is the managing director and is responsible for sales and service in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. “The real growth pattern in the outdoor venue is these pitch displays,” says Mette. “They will be used more creatively in years to come than what we’ve seen so far.”
The pitch displays are strictly designed for cameras. The cameras are on one side, and the displays are on the other and about three-quarters of the way down the end lines. “As you’re scanning the game back and forth on camera, these LED displays are constantly visible,” says Mette. A new business model for sponsorships is coming about given the control over the LED content.
The pitch display is available as a strategic sponsorship tool for a club with a broadcast element. Normally, on the side of the pitch is either fixed advertising or scrolling banners that rotate from one ad to the next. With LED displays along the pitch, it is possible to determine what is advertised. “A club can sell a sponsorship package to an advertiser that guarantees his ad will be on the displays every time there is a corner kick or a penalty kick,” says Mette. Not only is that ad ensured to be on TV during that game, but it is also likely to be run on sports highlight programmes.” In the past, the ad scrolling by at the time of a penalty kick was left up to chance.
Cheaper displays mean the venues are papered with video and most of that airtime can be monetised. Daktronics recently outfitted a sports arena in Düsseldorf with small rectangular displays above each of the 28 entrances to the bowl of the arena. “Instead of a ring around the bowl of an arena, they put 28 of these smaller displays over all the entrances,” says Mette. “They are used for a combination of show, team announcements, team line ups, or introductions.”
During the game they are primarily used for advertising. “Since the cost of these LED displays has come down so dramatically in the last five years, the return on investment has correspondingly gone up a lot,” says Mette.
Two new facilities have been developed in Europe by an American property developer and sports team owner company, Anschutz Entertainment Group: the Millennium Dome in London and O2 World in Berlin. The group comes from the sports side but with these new arenas they have many multi-use plans for different events like congresses, exhibitions, corporate events, and concerts.
As the owner of the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Anschutz is adept at keeping a venue packed even in the off-season. With Anschutz moving into the European market, it is likely for the sports to be secondary to the other sources of revenue for the stadium. “Anchutz is a master at keeping their facilities busy,” says Mette. “Their better known facility is the Staples Center in Los Angeles where there are about 280 events per year
Bosch’s Sahm sees a market that is more driven by the multipurpose arena. “It’s no longer that an ice hockey club or a basketball club is looking for a new home,” he says. “It is more of the multipurpose entertainment use that an operator is looking for, even if he comes historically from a pure sports side.”
The considerations from the entertainment side influence the technical solutions installed in these arenas. “The form of pure sports events have changed,” says Sahm. “There are expectations and requirements for the sound system and the entertainment technology, including video screens, other forms of score boards, and advertising with sponsors. It is much more modern and multi-functional and more event-like than it was maybe 10 years ago.”
For the audio in these new multi-purpose arenas, the frequency response, the dynamic capability, including digital matrixes and signal to noise ratio, all have to be on a high level since these are all the entertainment aspects. “The loudspeaker system is more or less a distributed setup where the single components are excellent quality that can be used maybe as a side fill or some supporting system for a touring array brought to the hall or which is covering a lot of events with the permanently installed system itself,” says Sahm.
Sound systems perform double duty as the sound reinforcement for emergency evacuation announcements in addition to the sports and entertainment functions. Clients approach Sahm at Bosch asking for a perfect sound system, which can be used for entertainment and for life safety applications and voice evacuation. “This is becoming more and more important. Also the international standards and other British standards for stadia and sports venues are more strictly executed when we are talking about voice evacuation.”
The systems become more integrated but at the same time the arenas need more specialists to provide a proper solution. The requirements in different aspects of the integrated systems are becoming more complex. While an integration company must be aware of all the other components in a system in order to be most efficient, it is still important to maintain specialties when approaching a new job.
“A systems integrator must ask himself: ‘what is my main focus?’” says Sahm. “If the systems integrator is coming from the security side or from the general low voltage installations of the electrical side, he is familiar with fire detection, intrusion detection, CCTV. If then in a venue, the sound system is part of the security package, it may be that the main purpose of the sound system is life safety relevant, evacuation, paging, and background music. Then the system integrator has a good chance to get the full package. It is the ‘security-driven’ approach to the market.”
An integrated solution includes video, media control, data transfer, audio performance for life safety, and audio for entertainment usage. While the owner of the building wants to have an integrated solution, specialists are needed to take care of acoustics, video, data transmission, etc. The integration comes in the awareness of each specialist’s role in order to share networks and make use of the same components, switches, or fiber optic cabling.
While the futuristic, state-of-the-art arenas are becoming more prevalent, the small-scale bread and butter facilities are also very important. The market varies in Europe depending on location.
David Lesch of AV Media in Prague finds his clients are installing systems piecemeal and are underestimating the required follow-up maintenance. His stadia are smaller facilities for the individual sport. Without revenue from other events, they find themselves with a shortage of money.
Alpstäg of Dr. W.A. Günther is seeing a larger number of smaller stadiums being built in Switzerland that are dedicated to their sport, without being multiuse facilities. “You have smaller ones and the integrators are there to install mainly audio for fire evacuation, for security, as well as pro sound in terms of speech, announcing and commenting the match.”
Based in Switzerland, Dr. W.A. Günther’s Alpstäg has seen the sports arena business spurred for football in his homeland with the European Football Championship approaching in the summer of 2008 in Austria and Switzerland.
Case Study: Robe at Arena Mytischi
A Robe moving light rig has been installed at the new Arena Mytischi near Moscow by Bossman Show Equipment, one of Robe’s official Russian distributors.
When there are no sporting events, the arena is used as a public skating facility. Concerts of all types are also staged there, making it the city’s foremost cultural and leisure hub.
The venue’s managers decided that buying their own in-house sound and lighting equipment was a more efficient and cost-effective route than renting it in each time they had a major concert, event or sports fixture.
Bossman’s Dmitry Prokhorov was asked to design the lighting scheme when the company was brought onboard as the project’s production sound and lighting consultants. They specified all the venue’s sound and lighting equipment and pre-programmed the Hog iPC lighting console.
Two 40-metre trusses are installed along either side of the main space, running along each side of the field of play.
Arena Mytischi has 28 metres of headroom, with each truss trimmed at 10 meters as the standard set up, but this is variable as the trusses are rigged on hoists. Each truss offers a mixture of Robe fixtures – 2 ColorWash 1200 ATs, 2 ColorSpot 1200 ATs, 10 ColorWash 575 ATs, 8 Robe Scan 1200 XTs and 2 Robe Fog 1500 FTs plus five 1800 W strobes per side. There are also two 4K architectural wash luminaires either side.
The design has allowed for full flexibility, so equipment can be de-rigged and re-rigged in different configurations as needed, depending on the requirements of the event.
Robe equipment was chosen as the best option for the operational and technical needs of the venue – the ice rink environment is a harsh one for any mechanical or electronic kit, so only the toughest fixtures were considered. They also needed really bright units to deal with the high trim height. Finally, Robe was also specified because it fitted the budget.
The Arena Mytischi lights are primarily used to illuminate and project onto the ice before ice hockey matches and skating competitions, so the main functions utilised are gobo projections, beam shape effects, strobe, etc. The rig is also used to light concerts – on its own as well as combined with lighting production brought in by artists.
One of the first events taking advantage of the Robe installation was the Russian Figure Skating Championships, when they were utilised for the opening ceremony and for various show performances.
www.aegworldwide.com
www.audiosystems.ch
www.avmedia.cz
www.boschcommunications.com
www.community.chester.pa.us
www.daktronics.com/gmbh.cfm
www.harmanpro.com
www.loudspeakers.net
www.robe.cz