12 July 2022

The XXII Commonwealth Games is set to welcome 54 countries and 18 territories to Birmingham. Robert Shepherd asks the experts what Alexander Stadium needs to have in place for the perfect sporting spectacle

Most stadia across the UK were built in the last century – some were even erected in late 1800s. As you can imagine, networks, Wi-Fi, fibre, data and IoT were not considered when the various clubs secured planning permission for a home ground.

That’s why, in recent years, stadia have been knocked down and re-built – even moved from residential areas to wasteland to embrace a digital world. After all, the fan experience has changed – it’s not just about watching the on-field action anymore. Now it’s almost as much about connectivity and the sharing of data.

“Stadiums and other large sporting venues have become notorious for their poor connectivity,” says Alan Jones, marketing manager, D-link UK &I. “The stadium environment concentrates a large volume of users, causing existing cellular networks (3G/4G) to slow and leading to woefully inadequate coverage, with expensive data rates for accessing content. This isn’t just an annoyance for fans, but also a missed marketing opportunity for free ‘word-of-mouth’ advertising for sports teams, as fans often like to share their experiences on social media.”

Jones says, “some clubs do try to implement Wi-Fi in their stadiums, but finding a solution that is both fit for purpose and reliable is a step too far for most”, with numerous technical and logistical hurdles to overcome.

Scheduled to begin later this year, Extreme Networks and Verizon Business have joined forces to roll out wireless connectivity for Manchester United at Old Trafford.

“Stadiums and other large sporting venues have become notorious for their poor connectivity”

Alan Jones, D-link UK &I

Additionally, Extreme will outfit Liverpool’s Anfield stadium with Extreme Wi-Fi 6E access points to deliver the latest generation of wireless connectivity and enable fans to take advantage of digital amenities. The wireless network will be managed by ExtremeCloud IQ, which helps stadium officials monitor and control Wi-Fi capacity and efficiency, configure devices and gain visibility into real-time analytics.

“This implementation will provide fans of these two clubs with fast, reliable Wi-Fi capabilities and increase the clubs’ ability to deliver high-performance, low-latency and secure digital services such as mobile ticketing and touchless transactions,” says Norman Rice, chief operating officer at Extreme Networks. “Extreme Venue Analytics will also provide Manchester United with actionable insights from the Wi-Fi network, providing information such as app performance and usage, foot traffic flow and effectiveness of concessions, among others. Similarly, with ExtremeAnalytics, Liverpool FC will gain real-time data, including fan foot traffic, popular concessions and points in the match when fans are most digitally engaged.”

“The communications needs are vast and multifaceted with providers, meaning the confinement of sporting locations and the logistics required to get established must be built into every delivery plan.”

Jonathan Bridges, Exponential-e.

Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium, located within Perry Park and Perry Bar, is the main athletics venue for the multi-sport event.

When the world is watching, you must up your game (pardon the pun) and the event organisers of the Commonwealth Games are acutely aware connectivity needs to be up to scratch.

Still, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy, according to Jonathan Bridges, chief innovation officer, Exponential-e.

“One of the biggest challenges when it comes to delivering and establishing such projects comes down to logistics and confinement of locations,” he says. “The communications needs are vast and multifaceted with providers, meaning the confinement of sporting locations and the logistics required to get established must be built into every delivery plan.”

Bridges says that another obstacle relates to collaboration with third parties and the complexity of working with and designing the project to support multiple broadcasters. “As with any deployment and service establishment, collaboration with third parties is critical to success, so it’s critical to map these out and build contingency plans for delays, especially in getting connectivity to difficult locations,” he adds. “Finally, typically these projects have short set up windows due to the locations, especially when they are city-based like the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games. This means the speed at which we need to work is hugely increased and requires larger teams to rapidly deploy, test and establish the service and its security.”

As far as Alexander Stadium is concerned, Rice has some advice to impart to the network manager and their team when it comes to moving, securing and storing data.
“Firstly, install a solution that ensures maximum connectivity and performance,” he says. “Secondly, it’s important to know your fans better so that you can customise elements of the experience for them. Tighter engagement with fans, particularly through an app, i.e. app-based ticketing, instantly adds value and encourages people to engage.”

Bridges adds that scalability and resilience are everything. “Existing networks are rarely – if ever – designed to operate at the kind of capacity an event like the Commonwealth Games demands,” he continues. “We would therefore strongly advise working with a network provider that can offer high-quality, uncontended connections for each key element of the event. They should also be able to connect to points of presence (PoPs) around the world, to ensure consistent global coverage, with minimal jitter, packet delay, and packet loss, without compromising the quality of on-site connectivity.”

“Firstly, install a solution that ensures maximum connectivity and performance. Secondly, it’s important to know your fans better so that you can customise elements of the experience for them”

Norman Rice, Extreme Networks

Aruba is a company that’s worked with many sports and events locations to help provide the latest and best network infrastructure it can. The company was selected by Tottenham Hotspur to help create what is widely viewed as the most technically advanced stadium in the world. Everything apart from the fire systems relies on the Aruba network. It came as no surprise then when the vendor was selected by Brum 2022 as part of a strategic partnership to provide secure and flexible connectivity at the games.

“Aruba, using their expertise as part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, are the ideal company to provide a complex and flexible network connection, enabling a seamless experience for our workforce, volunteers and athletes,” says Adrian Corcoran, chief information officer at Birmingham 2022.

Aruba says it will be providing a full network experience to the Games family, deploying a programmable edge-to-cloud solution using Wi-Fi 6, 6E and wired connectivity. “The solution not only provides an exceptional experience, but it will also allow for AI-driven security and management in the cloud via Aruba Central,” Simon Wilson, chief technology officer for Aruba UK&I.

“The biggest challenge for us has been the pace of the project and the temporary nature of the games. We only get access to many of the venues very close to the games kick-off, which means everything must be set up, tried and tested in a much shorter timeframe than most IT projects.” Wilson says this could not have been without the capabilities of Aruba Central and the skill and dedication of everyone involved. “The Games setup is also temporary with a clear mandate of the Commonwealth Games Federation that there should be a legacy,” he continues. “In fulfilment of that, everything we supply for the games will be repurposed into local schools, hospitals, and other public sector projects.”

Carl Jarvis, customer services manager at Pro-networks explains how his company has provided League Two football club Tranmere Rovers with day-to-day IT support since September 2004. He explains how the relationship works on an ongoing basis.

“IT upgrades would involve PC, laptop & server supply including setting up the AD infrastructure, security permissions, user administration etc.,” he says. “Data is stored securely on the server, backed up locally onsite and backed up to a secure offsite location. From a comms point of view, the club would use its social media channels to share important messages with supporters / customers and we have nothing to do with this.”

Of course, the most important thing is crowd safety. Thankfully, technology has moved on a lot since, for example, the Bradford City stadium fire of 1985 and the Hillsborough disaster in 1989. Alexander Stadium first opened in 1976 and then the facility became the home of UK Athletics in 2011, following a refurbishment that saw the creation of the 5,0000-seater East Stand on the backstraight.

For Birmingham 2022, it will be modernised with a post-Games permanent capacity of 20,000 – up from the current 12,700.

Jarvis explains how Pro-networks keeps the crowd moving. “Finally, we helped Wi-Fi connect the stadium, including turnstiles which was vital for them when the ticketing system changed from a “buy the tickets at the club shop and present to a steward to gain entry” to a “print you own tickets at home” solution, which are scanned, giving the club data on turnstile use/attendance etc.”.

Sam Durrant, head of security at Plextek says many factors come into play when managing a crowd.

“Critical communications and the use of IoT have come to be key players in a wide range of safety-critical activities and will be of vital importance for the upcoming Commonwealth Games held in Birmingham,” he adds. “One way of ensuring crowd safety is through the use of sensors for people counting – an approach recently used by Plextek involved the use of a combination of ultrasonic and infrared proximity sensors. These can be fixed to the entrance of the venue and used to count how many people are entering at any point and feed this data back to the event security to ensure they do not exceed capacity.”

Hugo Read, head of engineering at Landways, says the emergency systems deployed by his firm comprise the surveillance camera network, the voice alarm system and the emergency phones, are all enabled by the power and data network. All these connected systems run on the DC power network that includes a three-hour centralised battery back-up that covers all the systems.

“The use of highly visible emergency phones that are simply ‘lift to connect’ allows people in need to instantly connect to the control room without any need to dial or carry out any action,” Read says. “The voice alarm system is naturally highly resilient and extremely customisable, allowing emergency announcements and alarms to override the PA audio and to be ‘addressed’ to either individual speakers, different grouped zones or to the whole stadium.”

Read adds that due to the improved reliability of the overall network, including the phone system, plus the very fast and easy way people can connect back to the control room, allows for easier overall communication with the emergency services.

Of course, there’s more to safety than just getting people through the turnstiles. Should an individual want to smuggle in a dangerous item, it’s a lot more difficult to do it than it once was.

“Concealed object detection is another element to consider when working on a large-scale event,” Durrant continues. “The use of microwave imaging, capable of real-time detection of hidden objects, provides a non-intrusive approach. Microwaves, due to their low frequency, are intrinsically safe to use on people and can discriminate against a range of threats, including explosive devices and weapons. Such technology can be capable of screening people at close range in a short time which is ideal for sporting events such as the Commonwealth Games. “We are lucky that we now live in a society where we have multiple technologies at our disposable and that we can use these technologies to ensure the safety of others.”

Running the network is no mean feat at such a huge event and Hugo Read, head of engineering at Landways said, that whilst his company focuses on the infrastructure, rather than the data and application layer, there are inherent benefits of taking fibre to the device.

“Fibre is more secure, not restricted by bandwidth, not subject to electrical and environmental degradation and is not confined by distance,” he adds. “This means that the traditional intermediary comms rooms that are often vulnerable, can be removed.”

Furthermore, Read says that with the ‘cloudifcation’ of data and services, “dual fibre backhaul is a must, but of equal importance is the IP Transit arrangement which needs to be flexible to allow bursts of traffic at peak periods and fast upgrade paths, such as WDM equipment ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice.”

With so much data flowing around the networks, security is an obvious consideration – and that goes for employees as well as the thousands at the stadium.
Read says that using full fibre deployment directly from the core unit to all end points, data capacity and network reliability were both significantly increased, enabling all servers to be stored either in the core unit or in cloud storage, with very low latency download and upload times of data including very large analytics and video files. “This greatly improved the operations of the site, allowing users to access data wirelessly at high speed from all areas included in the coverage,” Read adds. “Allowing the data servers to be stored in the highly secure core unit also improved the data security. Full fibre connectivity in low-profile inconspicuous containment out of reach of the public without unnecessary breakout points and cabinets also increased security and reduced the risk of tampering and hacking. A variety of VLAN networks with their own security protocols for office use, conference, fans, EPoS, ticket scanning and media use also provided data separation and security for the different networks.”

“One way of ensuring crowd safety is through the use of sensors for people counting – an approach recently used by Plextek involved the use of a combination of ultrasonic and infrared proximity sensors”

Sam Durrant, Plextek

Bridges Security is also a major concern as these large-scale events are a primary target for cyber attackers, particularly DDoS attacks, so it’s critical to ensure we have effective cyber controls deployed on top of the service.”

For Wilson, any network, controlling access and protecting peoples’ data is paramount. “We achieve this through a zero-trust security model based around Aruba ClearPass,” he says. “By doing this we ensure no user or device has access until we know who or what they are and then only grant access to that which is appropriate for their role. We also use AI to help identify clients and essentially this is to ensure they are who they say they are.”

“The Games setup is also temporary with a clear mandate of the Commonwealth Games Federation that there should be a legacy”

Simon Wilson, Aruba UK&I

Wilson adds that when events occur across locations, the only way to operate at this scale is with cloud-based services delivered right to the edge. “By managing the network in the cloud, teams no longer have the heft task of shipping as much equipment between events or storing equipment when the games aren’t taking place,” he concludes. “The NaaS model enables the team to make it as simple as needed.”

Games on.