Melbourne City Football Club is a professional soccer club that competes in the major Australian domestic competition, the Hyundai A-League; the top tier of women’s soccer, the Westfield W-League; and the Foxtel National Youth League. The club was formerly known as Melbourne Heart FC. Melbourne City FC is owned by a consortium involving the City Football Group, which also owns English Premier League (EPL) club Manchester City FC and Major League Soccer club New York City FC in the USA.
Following the acquisition of the club in 2014, City Football Group made reliable local and global communication a key focus, with the Melbourne office requiring regular dialog with City Football Group’s offices in London and Manchester in the UK and New York in the USA.
Melbourne City FC took a lead from the work done by its sister club, Manchester City, and investigated the use of digital signage as a way of interacting in a dynamic, effective and modern way.
Ian Wilson is the head of infrastructure at City Football Group (Australia) and was key in choosing the right platform for Melbourne City: “Our colleagues in the UK had done a lot of work in finding a technology partner for its digital signage deployment at the Etihad Stadium and the head office in London and so, acting on their recommendation, we engaged with Tripleplay’s Australian team to find out exactly how their solutions could be of benefit to us.
“We needed a technology that would replace or complement our existing communications method of email, SMS and word of mouth; be easy to operate; enable both local and global communications; and that could be used for both players and staff.”
Following a period of internal discussion and analysis of leading solutions, the Tripleplay platform was selected and deployed at City Football Group’s Melbourne headquarters, linking to Tripleplay solutions implemented in both Manchester and New York and enabling global communications.
The Tripleplay solution implemented at the Melbourne headquarters delivered digital signage and IPTV across the local area network (LAN), controlled centrally but with the ability to update via the organization’s wide area network (WAN) from the UK too.
“Digital Signage is a very visual medium for communication so helps to ensure players and staff are aware of what is going on within the group,” said Wilson.
With integrated IPTV also available on screen it creates a much more eye-catching design and entertains and informs simultaneously.
“Using Tripleplay’s technology has saved us a lot of time in getting our messages out and heard. With time saving there is always a monetary value; time is money as the saying goes, so the investment has been really worthwhile for us,” added Wilson. “The ability to control both locally and from afar has given us a very agile and versatile communications platform.”
Aside from the planned benefits of the Tripleplay digital signage and IPTV solution, there has been an unexpected use and benefit as the club staff has utilized the solution to motivate and inspire players before games.
“In the run up to games, we’re playing loops of great moments from the season gone and highlights of games against our upcoming opposition, helping us create a buzz around the club and helping to inspire the team to success,” explained Wilson.
“It has been an added benefit and really popular around the club and within the City Football Group. We are really pleased with our decision to work with Tripleplay, their solutions are constantly evolving and they view their work with City Football Group and its teams as a partnership and relationship.”
March 18, 2016
