Tripleplay System at Harlequins Rugby

Harlequin Football Club is a professional rugby union team that plays in the Gallagher Premiership Rugby league, the top level of English rugby. Their ground the Twickenham Stoop Stadium is located in south-west London with a capacity of almost 15,000 fans. Acquired in 1963, the iconic Stoop has served as Harlequins’ home ground for more than 50 years.

With the main objective being to deliver a world-class experience for fans at the stadium, Harlequins wanted a flexible and dynamic IPTV and digital signage solution to help bring a contemporary feel to the stadium and deliver fan communications and entertainment. It was also important that any installation respected the long-established heritage of the Stoop site and the Harlequins brand.

Working alongside the client, their technology partner Philips and Tripleplay, IVC’s knowledge and experience working on large scale sporting venue deployments was utilised to create a high-level design and subsequently deliver the project on time and on budget.

The stadium’s entire digital estate was refurbished including the refit of multiple suites, bars, private booths, lounges, concourses and fan engagement zones.  This included deploying eye-catching and engaging digital signage throughout the stadium consisting of five video walls, five large format displays, 11 screens and 41 IPTV displays all managed by a central CMS and designed to provide maximum impact when communicating messages, promoting forthcoming events and sharing both Harlequin’s own and third-party content.

Furthermore, the refurbished executive suites were fitted with individual 55” screens with a custom Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) portal for live-streaming the action for fans to view when away from their pitch-side seats. Critically, the deployment also included a Tripleplay Low Latency Encoder to ensure optimal fan experience. All fans, whether pitch-side or in the social areas; wanted to view, hear and celebrate key match moments at the same time with no discernible time lag, hence the low encoder speed which IVC was able to deliver using the Tripleplay technology.

This project gave the IVC team the opportunity to demonstrate their creative flare by manufacturing bespoke brackets for the bar displays and repeater screens which were designed to integrate with the fabric of the building and provide the best possible sightlines in a non-conventional space.

IVC and Tripleplay are proud to have worked together again to bring such a significant improvement to the Twickenham Stoop. Despite a short lead time to design, install and commission the system, the Stoop now benefits from a state-of-the-art dynamic IPTV and digital signage solution which delivers a world-class stadium experience to excite and entertain all the Harlequins fans.