New York Islanders Debut Isles+ Digital Platform Presented by Verizon for New Fan Experience at UBS Arena

New York Islanders Debut Isles Digital Platform Presented by Verizon for New Fan Experience at UBS Arena Feature allows user to toggle among four unique camera angles, view replays on phone By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor

Friday, December 15, 2023 - 7:00 am

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In Belmont Park, NY, the New York Islanders are once again cooking up another digital enhancement that fans can enjoy at all home games. Via a web-based browser and a handful of technological upgrades implemented by the club's in-venue production department, any person attending a game at UBS Arena can hop onto Isles , a new digital platform that allows users to watch the action on the ice from four camera angles at once, watch replays of the game at any time, participate in a live chat with fellow spectators, play trivia games, vote on songs being played in the building, and access pertinent information on game day.

Isles is the ultimate game-day companion, says Ryan Halkett, SVP, Isles Media & Entertainment Group, New York Islanders. Fans will now be able to go back and look at replays that you wouldn't normally see on the videoboard as well as other features that we've added through feedback from our fans.

Long-Term Vision: Club Builds Off HomeIce Activation From COVID Season Coming to fruition this month, the project was initiated three years ago. As fans supported their respective NHL teams during the pandemic-stricken 2020 season, the Islanders teamed up with HomeTurf to develop a second-screen experience for fans to use at home. Typical in-game activations and familiar prompts attracted fans to HomeIce to connect with a team they weren't able to see in person. Entering their new home, UBS Arena, in November 2021, the Islanders worked closely with Verizon to establish secure 5G connectivity inside the building for when fans returned.

Isles entertains fans at all New York Islanders home games at UBS Arena.

The club was interested in leveraging one tool in particular: Verizon's 5G Multi-View. To build on the success of HomeIce, Halkett and Director, Production, Alex Leafer sought a way to augment the exclusivity of attending a home game in person and utilize the venue's tech backbone. For this balance, the Islanders relied on the assistance and partnership with Verizon to achieve the desired result.

It took us over a year and a half to develop, test, and further revise this solution, Halkett explains. Since we're used to having HomeIce as our second screen, we took some key learnings to understand what our fans like and don't like. We saw that they love trivia and polls but wanted to watch more replays and get more stats, but you can show those only during a stoppage in play. Alex and I sat down to figure out how we could enable any of our fans to control their own experience along with some of those other additives that they enjoy.

Fans can view updated MTA train times, access the team's website, enter the 50/50 raffle, and more on Isles .

A deeper dive into the analytics revealed a dip in engagement when fans were asked to download HomeTurf's HomeIce app to their mobile device. With a rise in popularity since the pandemic, the team opted for a QR-code-based entry to enable fans to join the fun more easily.

We want it to be frictionless and allow fans to get in right away, adds Halkett.

With the idea conceived, further work on the project went into overdrive during the summer months prior to the start of the season. When the preseason began with a contest against the Philadelphia Flyers on Sept. 27, the team was beta-testing a handful of designs. As the team member doing the heavy lifting on the backend, Leafer integrated fans' familiarity with HomeIce with newer elements in Isles .

There were some challenges along the way to making sure that everything was working correctly and figuring out the right way of displaying features like live chat and polling, he says. For instance, when you go into a live video feed, you're able to click a button to participate in a poll without its taking over your entire experience. There were a lot of changes that we made to it, and, while they weren't necessarily difficult, it was about repurposing the design.

Reliving the Action: Replays, Interactivity, Personalization, and More Nearly two months after first offline testing, the first official version of Isles launched on Nov. 22 vs. the Flyers. The current iteration, which Halkett and Leafer want to further improve and ultimately create a home version for, can be activated only within UBS Arena. After scanning the QR code displayed on the main centerhung - QR codes and nods to join the platform are shown throughout the game - fans with location services enabled are taken to the digital portal.

One of the biggest draws is four synchronized angles of the action from various positions on the ice: one of the main video feeds shown on the videoboard with a scorebug and SMT graphics showing the names of players moving on and off the ice along with real-time stats; a full-ice view from an elevated corner of the building; one of the Islanders' attacking end of the ice; another specialty camera displaying a unique perspective of the playing surface each game. For its debut, this fourth angle was an Ankle Cam, which can be seen on national broadcasts on TNT and ESPN. It is controlled in-house via an Islanders camera operator and a PTZ camera.

We're actually utilizing some of the cameras that we bought during COVID-19 for a bunch of our remote productions, adds Leafer. When we moved into this building, Ryan [wanted our production] to not be a normal show and to show our fans angles that they don't typically see. We can change these feeds every game, so the angle can be from an Ankle Cam one game and an

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