Premier League's Tottenham Hotspur Open Super Stadium Fan engagement and a deeper connection to the NFL are key takeaways for stunning North London venue By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 10:49 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
As sports venues evolve to counter the increasingly immersive broadcast experience that fans get at home, the UK has fired its latest salvo in the battle: Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Tottenham Hotspur's new stadium is designed as a destination venue.
The Tottenham Experience (the venue has not yet been officially named) begins well before football fans reach the gate. The exterior of the facility boasts a glittering cladding of 35,000 tiles, 4,801 of which are perforated metal panels that make up the stadium's overhead veil, fitted to modular frames affixed to the rear of the stands, along with 2,505 glass panels.
Inside, 17,500 of the stadium's 62,062 seats are in the South Stand, the largest single-tier stand in the UK, reaching more than 110 ft. high. From there, fans overlook an enlarged pitch (105 x 68 meters vs. the 100 x 67 meters of the White Hart Lane stadium, which previously occupied the site), which can slide in and out of the venue, a trick that NFL Arizona Cardinals fans will be familiar with. However, instead of being used to expose the grass of an enclosed stadium to water and sun, the sliding pitch will reveal an artificial surface intended to accommodate, among other things, a minimum of two NFL matches every year for the next decade.
The soccer grass pitch is in sections on rails and slides out to reveal an artificial surface for NFL matches.
The soccer grass pitch sits in three pitch-long steel sections, weighing more than 3,000 tons each, driven by 68 electric motors, and rolling along rails on 168 wheels. The sections slide out simultaneously in approximately 25 minutes and then move laterally to create a seamless surface. Once the sections are connected, the hydraulic sides lift to bring touchlines to the same level as the pitch. When not in use, the grass pitch retracts into a storage garage in the South Stand, where it can remain for up to 10 days, thanks to LED lighting, cooling, and irrigation systems.
The new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will rely for now on the same broadcast infrastructure that its predecessor used, including the production-truck compound on the east side of the stadium and cabling to BT Tower for transmission for BT Sport and Sky Sports.
Big A/V
The new venue will offer plenty of audio and video. Six bespoke main LED video displays installed by Daktronics inside the stadium bowl total nearly 11,000 sq. ft. Two of them, in the South Stand, measure 3,500 sq. ft. each and are the largest stadium screens in Western Europe. Two LED video displays, each measuring 1,925 sq. ft., are fitted on the stadium exterior, on the South West and South East facades. TGI Worldwide-installed perimeter LED screens circumnavigate the pitch. And nearly 1,800 HD TVs are scattered throughout the stadium's general concourse and premium areas.
LED ribbon boards on the perimeter of the pitch are part of a massive video offering at the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Audio comes through loud ( Very loud, says venue Head of Technology Sanjeev Katwa) and clear, via 4,500 JBL speakers of various types installed throughout the stadium. These range from the 18 VLA-C weatherized compact line arrays ringing the bowl, a design derived from JBL's concert-touring VTX series speakers and intended to connect with touring sound systems that accompany concerts there, to the CBT columnar speakers in back-of-house areas. The entire audio system is on a Dante network, as are the 153 Crown amplifiers powering it.
Each of the speakers in the arrays can be zoned separately, so there's a lot of flexibility both in the design and the way they can be programmed, explains Ryan Penny, senior business development manager, large venues, EMEA, HARMAN International. And the line arrays have 120 degrees of coverage, which is unique for European stadiums. (The audio consultant on the project was Joe O'Herlihy, longtime audio director and live-sound engineer for U2.
A Destination Venue
Penny's comments underscore what the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is meant to do and to signify. Like a growing number of sports venues in the U.S., it's designed as a destination for more than football matches. It houses 65 pubs and restaurants and is the first football stadium in the world to house its own microbrewery. It will soon feature retail shops and a hotel, which will all contribute to drawing a forecast 2 million visitors per year.
Katwa says the new stadium is Europe's most advanced sports venue, but his benchmarks go far beyond sports; he compares it not with other EPL stadiums but rather with other destination venues, such as the new Terminal 5 at London's Heathrow Airport and the Dubai Mall, the world's largest and most visited shopping center. He also says network technology is at the core of the project.
Featuring 4,500 JBL speakers of various types, the audio system at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is on a Dante network.
Our technology here has been focused on the network; it's the core of our entire technology journey, he says, citing the stadium's extensive Wi-Fi and broadband infrastructure, which was used experimentally at one of two games preceding the opening match on April 3 (vs. Crystal Palace FC) for staff communications throughout the venue, supplanting the radios usually used.
He notes how the stadium's IPTV network allows the approximately 1,800 video displays throughout the facility to be zoned for highly specific and localized messaging from the venue's data center, which, he emphasizes, is behind a large glass window and viewable to patrons wal
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Premier League's Tottenham Hotspur Open Super Stadium Fan engagement and a deeper connection to the NFL are key takeaways for stunning North London venue By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
