The Brief

To develop a broadcast quality TV network within Premiership championship and league football stadiums. To deliver targeted advertising to audiences at a capacity of over one million viewers per week. Each venue to have it's own broadcast play out system and should be operated by no more than one individual per club on each match day.

Our first task was a consultancy piece to further define their business concept, this involved looking at the broadcast market, with a focus on closed network TV platforms as well as the sports programming that existed in the UK market. This led to a demo that was used as a tool to get first round investment and was developed as a DVD.

What we did.

Through the projects lifespan we have worked through a series of launch phases rolling out enhanced functionality and obtaining consumer feed back through a number of research channels. This allowed us to develop personas based around the Match day audience.

In phase one we approached the project in two ways; to source a high quality broadcast system comparable to any major Television broadcaster and to design a match day programme experience, which would cover all the content aspects.

We then began our workshops with the match day media stakeholders and developed a strategy to not only keep the fans focused on the advertising messages but to deliver quality and informative content that surrounded this. We worked with a number of partners to achieve this with the first being PA news to deliver Live sport update packages of news content, results, tables and Live match action.

One of the other challenges we faced would be to couple national campaign TV advertisements with localised advertising. For instance a typical scenario would be, if we were broadcasting a top of the range car manufacturers latest model we could also schedule banner-based advertising within the same real estate that allowed regional dealerships to benefit from this targeted approach.

The next challenge was to look at the way a football fan consumed media, be this on his/her mobile phone through ipod's, PDA's, Internet etc. This could allow a fan on a match day to interact with the content on the screen through bespoke Entertainment packages surrounding several different Genres. (football, music, films, holidays) Not only now were we broadcasting to over 1 million football fans every week, It would allow them to be involved in the quality entertainment packages that we can deliver and take away to consume outside of the stadium.

With these issues solved we began to think about the operational aspects of the broadcast playout and how a match day operator would use the system. We designed and developed several bespoke software utilities that the operator could use during the match day broadcast. One of the applications functions as a GPI, triggering advert sequences, Entertainment programmes, banner advertising, league Tables and on screen text message announcements. Aside from operational functionality the GPI can also perform restart functions and utility checks.

We also worked with the press association data in one XML format and developed an application to filter and parse the data to each stadium server.

Over the five years that Splendid have been working with Match Day Media we've embarked on a number of enhancements to the channel through many discreet phases. such as delivering Team Line up information populated in conjunction with Live Press association data. A download chart voted for by the fans displaying the latest music videos and exclusive interviews with it's very own download website and programmes containing Live match statistic and MMS messaging to screen.

All of these phases have followed the Splendid UCD process.

Splendid are ongoing creative and technical partners to MDM-TV and are responsible for all visual design, motion graphics and new functionality development.

The Platform

Publitronic Broadcast Server in a closed network environment. running bespoke Splendid software.

The Results

Regularly reaching audiences in excess of 7500,000 through 1000 plasma screens installed at 8 grounds on match day. 60% of fans are now spendidng longer on concourse around kiosk and bar areas because of the MDM service. MDM-TV has been installed into the following stadiums since launch,

ARSENAL | ASTON VILLA | BOLTON WANDERERS | DERBY COUNTY |EVERTON | GLASGOW CELTIC | GLASGOW RANGERS | FULHAM | LEEDS UTD | MANCHESTER CITY | MANCHESTER UTD | MIDDLESBROUGH | NEWCASTLE UTD | WIGAN | WEST BROMWICH ALBION | WEST HAM UTD

We're delighted to be working with Splendid as we expand MDM-TV to clubs throughout the Premiership and beyond. As a design led, dynamic new medium, Splendid have exceeded MDM-TV's requirement for delivering innovative, cutting edge design and functionality.

Gerry McKenna Managing Director,, Match Day Media

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