It’s not long now until the Glasgow 2018 European Championships, and the whole NVT team are hard at work preparing to help stage one of Scotland’s largest multi-sport events.
Back in November 2017, NVT Group was announced as the Official Networks and Network Integration Services Supporter of the Glasgow 2018 European Championships. Since then, we have been busy planning and preparing and, very importantly, testing for the exciting new multi-sport event.
NVT Group will provide telecommunications services, internet access and network integration to venues across the Championships between 2 and 12 August 2018. Our task has been to design, build, test, deploy, support and de-commission the technology required within a total timeframe of 50 weeks. We are familiar with working on large-scale events, however, and we have applied our learning from the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and other major events. In fact, Glasgow 2018 will be NVT Group’s 5th sporting event, and our 3rd multi-sport event, proving we have a wealth of experience in dealing with the fluidity and pace of large-scale events.
Glasgow 2018: The Inside Track
On Friday 11th May we invited stakeholders to the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow to our Inside Track event to hear about how we are getting organised for the upcoming Championships. Cathy Chapman, Senior Technology & Broadcast Manager at Glasgow 2018, and Tommy Mitchell, Group Technical Director at NVT, shared the technology plans for the Championships so far.
Our Viia, Aiir and Concepta solutions were also demonstrated, allowing delegates to see first-hand the innovative technology which we will be deploying to helping to stage the Championships successfully. Afterwards, the group even had the chance to try out the iconic Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome track themselves in a cycling taster session.
The scale of the Championships mean that the technology we implement needs to be ultra-reliable. An estimated TV audience of 1.03 billion across Europe will tune in to watch the Championships, just one element which relies on the technology we implement. We have also been working with technology partners including Ticketmaster, Dell, timing and scoring third-parties, and photographers to carry out rigorous testing and ensure all areas cooperate successfully.
The journey to the Championships has not been without its challenges. Venues span across Scotland, with some being more accessible than others. Locations such as the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome (Track Cycling) and the SSE Hydro (Gymnastics), which have been used for large sporting events in the past, already have facilities and elements of connectivity. However, certain venues including Cathkin Braes (Mountain Bike Trails) and Loch Lomond (Open Water Swimming) lack the facilities that a large-scale event requires, meaning we have to build networks from scratch and integrate all the different types of technology so that they form a functioning data network which supports events in those venues. Feeding data across water and installing remote locations with reliable connectivity are just a couple of the challenges we are overcoming to ensure effective staging of the Championships.
We are confident that our work will help to deliver a fantastic European Championships to stakeholders, including the TV audience all over Europe. Keep an eye on our social media channels, and sign up to our email newsletter to hear more about NVT’s role in Scotland’s largest multi-sport event later this year.
