Member Article

SPVRS: How Virtual Reality is Transforming Sports Construction

Michael Duell, of North East B2B telecoms and IT specialists CCS, explores how virtual reality is being used by one Premier League football club in the development of its new sports stadium and what the technology means for the future of the industry.

If you are a football fan you may have noticed cranes towering over, and a corner missing from, one of the Premier League’s most well-known grounds.

In just seven months’ time Tottenham Hotspur’s 110-year-old 32,000 seater stadium will officially become a thing of the past, closing its turnstiles for good.

However, look behind White Hart Lane and you will see an exciting project is taking place. A brand new £400m stadium, being built on the current site will boast a capacity of more than 61,000, with Tottenham set to move in at the start of the 2018/19 season.

Even though the new Spurs stadium is currently only in the construction stage, fans are already being given the opportunity to take a look around the new ground thanks to virtual reality.

The North London club has been inviting season ticket holders into its state-of-the-art Lilywhite House complex to have a virtual tour of the new stadium, with fans being shown around the new executive boxes and lounges, as well as being given a first look at the West Stand glass wall lounge - one of the most innovative features of the new stadium.

The tour begins looking out over the building site of the new stadium, where guests are given statistics such as the height of the new stadium, along with travel times from the stadium to major transport hubs, including Heathrow, Stanstead and King’s Cross.

Visitors are then taken into a 12-seater IMAX style cinema where they are shown a film, full of facts and figures about the current stadium, new stadium and London. The film gives viewers the experience of flying over London towards New White Hart Lane, before coming to rest in the new stadium, with high quality sound and acoustics adding to the realism.

Guests are then given a PlayStation controller, enabling them to walk around the Premium Package hospitality suites, where the famous Roux family will be creating the monthly menu. There is also a ‘Legends’ area where Spurs legends such as Gary Mabbutt, Ledley King, Pat Jennings and Cliff Jones will host tables of guests.

The PlayStation control allows guests to explore the dining facilities on offer, as well as going inside the new kitchen facility, before then walking towards a set of double doors which open to reveal the new stadium, giving guests a view from different sections with a VR image so realistic you could almost be there.

The tour doesn’t end there though, guests are then taken into another suite in Lilywhite House and invited to sit in Recaro seats, exact replicas of those used by Mauricio Pochettino and the management team in the current White Hart Lane dugout.

Once seated, guests are handed VR headsets and a PlayStation controller and introduced to the Tunnel Club. This is probably one of the most original and distinctive features in the new stadium and one which marks it out from other premier league grounds.

In the new White Hart Lane’s Tunnel Club, supporters will be able to eat and drink whilst watching their heroes and the goings on in the match day tunnel through a one-way glass window.

Then, as the match is about to kick off, supporters go through a door adjacent to the player’s tunnel to their very own Recaro seats. The Tunnel Club will have eight rows of seating directly behind the home team dugout - almost acting as an extension of it.

After the virtual tour has ended, fans are invited to hop on a PC and choose where they would like to sit in the new stadium. This feature gives you the exact view from that seat, and if you look close enough you may able to see the USB port which is built into your seat!

The chance to examine the view and the sightlines from these virtual seats has clearly been a valuable selling point for Spurs who have already made season ticket sales thanks to this impressive feature.

Tottenham are one of the first clubs to use an in depth Virtual Reality tour to promote and sell packages for a new stadium before it has been built. It will be interesting to see if other football clubs take advantage of this technology to show supporters around their new homes, especially with some of the world’s biggest clubs, including Chelsea, Real Madrid and Barcelona, all renovating their stadia in the very near future.

Just a few years ago and a short distance away, Arsenal set the standard for ground redevelopment in the modern era. They can be, and should be, justly proud of what they achieved with the Emirates Stadium.

But inventive features, like the amazing Virtual Reality tour of New White Hart Lane, shows that the neighbors and traditional rivals are determined they will not be left behind. And one thing that seems clear is that Spurs’ new ground will be Virtually second to none.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by CCS .