The Daytona International Speedway embarked upon a reimagining and reconstruction in 2013 that transformed it, operators claim, into the first and only motorsports stadium in the world.
The project, Daytona Rising, was completed in time for the 2016 Daytona 500, a natural point in the racing calendar to launch the new venue – a 0.9 mile-long, single-stand stadium that would seat 101,500 spectators and host upwards of 150,000 within its grounds.
As a part of the project, the team at Daytona International Speedway decided to invest in the latest stadium technology available and chose Tripleplay’s Digital Signage and IPTV solution as its product of choice.
“Daytona International Speedway focuses on partnerships, so when we began the Daytona Rising project we looked for technology providers we believed would best suit our needs both now and in the future,” says Julie Giese, VP marketing and communications at DIS. “We saw IPTV and Digital Signage as a key part of our future strategy, a technology that would allow us to communicate better with our spectators, not just from a promotional perspective, but from an informational point and also to ensure they were kept aware of schedule changes and weather warnings.
“We’re also very aware that NASCAR is a blink-and-you-miss-something sport, and we don’t want our fans to feel they missed a moment. So being able to deliver live race footage across our stadium was vital and finding a technology that could do all of this was fantastic.”
In total, Daytona International Speedway chose to deploy over 1,500 screens – 800 Samsung Smart Signage Platform (SSSP) with embedded media player and 700 Peerless ruggedized outdoor screens – using the Tripleplay Digital Signage and IPTV head end to deliver the digital media content to each of them.
“Tripleplay’s system is very intuitive, very simple to operate,” says Rodney Ward, senior director for venue technology at International Speedway Corporation (ISC). “We found that we did not need to deploy a highly technical member of the team to operate the system. We could give secure access to a member of the marketing team or to a junior technician and they would need very little training.”
Aside from its ease of use and improvement to the fan experience, the Tripleplay platform also helps Daytona International Speedway to provide value to its sponsors and partners. “We now have the capabilities to offer additional opportunities to our partners and sponsors that we otherwise wouldn’t,” adds Ward. “Not only that, we can also produce reports to show the amount of time adverts have appeared on screen, allowing us to show the value of the advertising inventory we offer. This is a huge positive for our sponsors.”
With 1,500 screens on-site, the ability to recognize problems and faults on such a vital system remotely is a huge advantage to Daytona, with Tripleplay’s in-built reporting and analytics modules ensuring technical staff can have confidence in the system.
“We can see very quickly if we have a problem, we receive email notifications if there are outages or problems and can act upon them,” continues Ward. “With a venue that is almost a mile long can you imagine trying to find problems and faults? Time consuming, costly and incredibly difficult.
“Having the Tripleplay safety net, along with the ability to view every TV’s status individually means we can find problems, remotely attempt to fix and if the problem persists make a visit to the screen with knowledge of the problem and knowing exactly which screen we need to fix. It is a huge time saver.”
Tripleplay has delivered additional features and developments throughout the installation process, ensuring the technology evolves with the requirement of Daytona International Speedway.
“Tripleplay has delivered everything we have asked of them and more, they support us incredibly well, they update and add features as we need them and they keep us informed of future technology developments,” says Ward. “Not only were they the most cost-effective solution, but they have also proven to be incredibly valuable as a partner too.”
“We had a huge challenge here at Daytona International Speedway to create a future proof stadium, a modern arena that could provide a top-notch experience for our Speedway fans and also fans of other sports and events we plan to host; country music festivals, soccer matches, football games for instance,” says Giese. “We wanted a venue that was world-class not just in our traditional industry but in others too. With the help of Tripleplay we have achieved exactly that, and we’re proud to call them a partner.”
