LED displays have moved far beyond simple scoreboards and image magnification. In stadiums and arenas, screens now shape the journey from fan zone to concourse to bowl, supporting crowd movement, commercial partnerships, matchday entertainment, and the wider sense of investment in a venue.
Inavate spoke to Oliver Brindley, head of strategy at ADI.tv, and Donald Imrie, marketing communications manager at ADI.tv, about changing fan expectations, the rise of total stadium screen networks, and why successful deployments depend as much on content, operations, and commercial strategy as they do on LED hardware.
Inavate: How have audience expectations evolved when it comes to the experiences they want in big venues, arenas and stadiums?
OB: ADI started working in stadiums in 1997, when we installed the first LED screens in UK sports stadiums at Aston Villa. They’ve remained a customer ever since, so we’ve seen that change over nearly 30 years.
Fundamentally, screens have gone from being a luxury to being an expected part of the stadium experience. In the beginning it was often a screen in the corner for image magnification. That has developed into ribbons, perimeter displays, screens around the stadium, fan zones and displays outside the stadium.
Even the main screens have changed. They were traditionally 16:9, but now we’re seeing more super-wide LED screens, often 32:9. That allows clubs to use part of the screen for image magnification, part for match information and part for partners and sponsors.
Perimeter LED is obviously important because it brings in advertising revenue, but we’re also seeing more digital transformation lower down the divisions. Even where screens are predominantly used commercially, from a fan’s point of view it feels like the club is investing in the venue. It adds atmosphere and value. More clubs are also using ribbons and perimeter displays, which were traditionally advertising assets, to directly engage their own fans.
Inavate: With more technology in these venues, especially at smaller clubs, how much of the challenge is giving organisations systems they can operate easily day-to-day?
OB: One of ADI’s biggest USPs is our Live Venue network. We have direct connectivity into venues around the UK, so where we used to send teams of people out to stadiums to manage matchday content in dedicated control rooms, that can now happen centrally. We deliver remote broadcast to venues from ADI.
For some lower league clubs, budget is a factor and they may want to operate and maintain some of their own hardware. But many still use us to centrally manage it because they don’t have to invest in as much hardware on site, and our knowledge is centralised here. That can make it more reliable.
On the hardware side, our latest MT range of LED panels is completely modular. The processing and power are contained within the panel, with power and data going in and out. If something goes wrong or a panel is damaged, it can be swapped out easily and sent back to our service department. We repair it and send it back into their spares.
So we have models where we operate everything for clubs, and models where they can take responsibility for their own service, maintenance, and matchday operation. The latest panels are much lighter, slimmer and easier to handle than the previous generation, so we can support clubs at different levels.
Inavate: LED has become a huge part of the stadium experience. How has its role changed?
OB: Two good examples are Aston Villa and Burnley.
At Aston Villa, we carried out a major stadium upgrade a couple of years ago. We augmented the LED screens, installed a bigger digital perimeter system, added ribbons around the stadium and put digital signs above stairwells. The ability to brand the stadium and engage with fans has really increased.
Outside the bowl, we installed a massive corner screen above the new club shop to encourage fans into that area. More recently, Villa Park has been developing The Warehouse, which is the refurbishment of an old warehouse on site. We installed a huge, very high-resolution, super-wide screen there. It has become part of the pre-match experience. Because it’s super-wide, it doesn’t just show the match on a standard 16:9 format; it can be split into different areas for different content.
At Burnley, we’ve helped to transform Turf Moor over the last three or four years. There has been a similar digital transformation inside the bowl, but also around the outside. There are ribbons at different entrances to help fans find where they’re going. This year, one of the biggest additions has been a player tunnel. As players come onto the pitch, they now move through a high-resolution LED tunnel.
So LED has extended from being something focused on the 90 minutes to something that touches every part of the fan journey.
Inavate: Many of these projects are in existing stadiums rather than new builds. How easy is it to add these systems into older venues?
OB: Most stadiums we work in are existing venues. Places like Turf Moor and Villa Park are old stadiums that have changed many times over the years.
The new generation of LED we created three or four years ago has made a big difference. The MT series is about half the weight and half the depth of previous products. When you’re looking at older stadiums and trying to put LED across the top of stands, it just wasn’t possible when displays were 30kg or 50kg per square metre. Now we can put screens in many more places.
The development of the technology, especially making it more lightweight, has changed what’s possible.
Inavate: With screens in different locations and aspect ratios, how do you approach content?
OB: From the start, ADI understood that it wasn’t just about putting up hardware. If you don’t create and deliver content, you’ve just got a big black canvas.
We have a studios division that creates content, and we work in close partnership with clubs to produce it. On matchdays, we deliver that content for them, mainly from ADI over our Live Venue network.
From a technical point of view, what we use depends on the complexity of the job. We have our own dedicated signage platform, digiSOFT, which we’ve developed over the last 15 years. It is specifically designed to deliver to digital perimeter systems and has features built for that.
For matchday galleries, we can run a full remote broadcast from ADI. Depending on complexity, that could involve one or two people in the studios, or up to four or five if there are many screens around the stadium.
The challenge in recent years has been finer-pitch LED and more LED around the venue, which means pushing a lot of pixels. Increasingly, we’re using media servers of the kind you would see on major concert tours to manage that. Often it will be a mix of us pushing content from ADI and remotely controlling media servers on site. It depends on the scale of the project.
Inavate: With broadcast feeds, live data, entertainment and sponsor content, how do you manage synchronisation across different screens?
OB: We have what we call Total Stadium Takeover, which allows us to synchronise content across all digital platforms within the stadium: screens, perimeter, ribbons and signage. This supports our own software and workflows, and we have developed API triggers between other software platforms.
A key reason clubs choose us is that we can take control of all the assets in the stadium. In some venues, one company has installed the main LED screens, another has installed the perimeter, someone else has done ribbons and another company might be involved in fan zones. You can end up with four or five operators, and it becomes very hard to get everything working together.
Consolidating those assets into one larger platform is powerful. At Aston Villa, for example, we can trigger branding across every element we have in the stadium.
Inavate: Beyond replays and sponsorship messages, how do screens help make fans feel more immersed and engaged?
OB: Our service has moved from creating content for screens and matchday programming to more of a sports presentation service.
That might include presenter-led solutions that engage fans from the fan zone, through the concourses and into the bowl before the match. One of the key changes is that clubs want to prolong the matchday. It’s not just about people arriving 10 minutes before kick-off and leaving at the final whistle.
You can see that particularly with newer destination venues. Clubs are looking at how they add value, especially for younger fans. There is much more competition for their time and money than just going to a football match. Younger audiences are used to screen-based experiences, so it is about creating touchpoints throughout the journey.
We can provide presenters and DJs, and we deliver interactive elements such as quizzes, social media content on screens, phone uploads that can be pushed to displays, light shows and integrations between LED and stadium lighting. It is entertainment, but it is also about using screens and signage to help move people around the stadium and shape their journey.
Inavate: So there is crowd management as well as crowd entertainment?
OB: Yes, exactly.
Inavate: How important are sponsorships and commercial partnerships in funding these systems?
OB: Very important. Clubs talk about fan engagement and investment in their fans, and that is true, especially when it comes to long-term investment in the next generation of supporters. But football clubs are also under constant financial pressure, so there is often a need for a short-term commercial return.
For us, it’s not just about providing hardware. We provide a full consultancy service to help clubs commercialise their screens.
Digital perimeter in the Premier League is largely driven by television audiences, but when you go below that level, there is a big audience drop-off. We help clubs in lower leagues financially model the opportunity and target more localised businesses. Instead of selling one brand across the whole LED system, we help them package the inventory into different opportunities and combine it with other media as part of wider sponsorship packages.
That consultancy can run from the initial idea through to financial modelling, marketing support, sales assets, and helping clubs target customers.
The same applies to fan engagement. Quizzes, on-screen gaming and interactive features are valuable for fans, but each of those assets also has sponsorship value. They are designed so clubs can sell them to partners.
DI: It is reactive as well. You can tailor content to specific events or moments. We recently saw a club repackage its LED for Chinese New Year celebrations to engage fans in the concourse and inside the ground. There is real versatility there.
Inavate: How do you balance the desire to use more advanced and ambitious technology with the need for total reliability?
OB: There are different levels of value attached to different assets and different scales of event.
At the very top, digital perimeter can be extremely valuable because those assets are sold by the minute, particularly for televised matches. Part of our service is providing sliding scales of support.
For most customers, a matchday technician is part of the service. They arrive early, do pre-match checks, make sure everything is working correctly and check the links back to ADI. Because we now have hot-swappable tiles, if something does happen it can be changed very quickly.
Lower league clubs may support some of that themselves, but if they do have an issue, we have a team here working on matchdays. That is important. If you buy from a standard nine-to-five business, you might not have support on a Saturday afternoon when something goes wrong. We provide different levels of support to suit the club and the application.
Inavate: What are the biggest challenges in integrating LED, broadcast and live production into a seamless experience?
OB: The content delivery itself is not usually the biggest challenge. Everything is delivered over fibre, and the match feed can come to us and go back to the venue incredibly quickly. Latency is not generally an issue.
The bigger challenge is communication and working with clubs, because every club is different and many are quite siloed. We might be liaising directly with people managing matchday operations, but the same assets also have commercial value. The person we are dealing with may be focused on budget rather than on driving sponsorship value.
A lot of the ambitious things we want to do require club input. You need the club to promote it to fans, to bring partners on board and to help realise the value. The challenge is often bringing the right stakeholders to the table and helping them understand what those assets can do.
Inavate: Is there anything that is still not quite working, or anything you think is possible but not happening yet?
OB: There is a big push to improve the pre-match experience. I’m not sure there is anything specific that isn’t working technologically, but it is a challenge for clubs to get people into the bowl earlier and enjoying entertainment before kick-off.
Culturally, in the UK, that can be difficult. A lot of fans want to come to their seat five minutes before the match starts.
Many of the fan engagement pieces you see look fantastic and have been developed in US markets, where people might spend all day at a sporting event. Translating that across the Atlantic into UK football is not always straightforward. Here, people often arrive close to kick-off and are completely focused on the match for 90 minutes. We don’t naturally have the same ebbs and flows in football, although you might see that more in other sports.
So the opportunity is there, but the challenge is cultural as much as technical.