Business collaboration firm Avaya is looking to target its communication network at English Premier League football clubs after successfully deploying it at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games.
The San Francisco-based company was responsible for providing switches, router, data centres, wireless access points and other unified communication equipment for Sochi.
At least three billion people watched TV broadcasts worldwide each day, according to Garry Veale, president of Avaya in EMEA, while athletes, media and other participants were able to tap into 36 IPTV channels across the Avaya network infrastructure.
"If there was going to be a security problem we would have seen it at Sochi. We learnt that the security we use, the set up we have and our software works. We had no breaches and no downtime, but 100% uptime," he explained to CBR.
"You could check your smartphone, iPad or tablet wherever you were and during the break of a game, you could stream any of the 36 IPT channels. So you could be watching live the skiing while you’re sitting and watching the ice hockey.
Veale said he is now looking to target Premier League football clubs for business growth in the UK this year.
"Now that we’ve proved to everybody we can do it at Sochi, we are going to go to these Premier League teams and tell them ‘you should be living on another level of service with IPTV’," he explained.
"So if a player scores a goal, users can instantly find out about him, where he came from, how much his transfer is and what his stats are.
"I’m definitely going to try and get contracts with them because I go to Premier League games and you can’t do anything with your social media. They don’t have integrated wireless, so if you try and send a tweet or take a photograph on Facebook, it’s almost impossible.
"70 stadiums haven’t started thinking about the customer experience that they could be offering at football games. You turn up, you want get the info on the team, the history of a player – it should all be here."
