Baxter Arena deploy Digital Signage and IPTV throughout state-of-the-art college facility.
Baxter Arena hosted its first athletic event on Oct. 23, 2015, the building is the on-campus home of UNO hockey, men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball. The state-of-the- art facility, funded in part by individual contributors in the Omaha community, has already taken its place among the finest athletic venues in the country.
The arena seats 7,898 for hockey and features both the main arena for competition and a community ice sheet that serves as both an alternate practice facility for the hockey team as well as a venue for public skating, youth hockey, figure skating, club hockey and campus recreation. The building also hosts concerts, graduations and other campus and community events. Baxter Arena will be the anchor for future development by Omaha Athletics on the former grounds of Chili Greens Golf Course.
More than an IPTV Solution
“We started building Baxter Arena in 2015 when a local acquaintance, Johnny Rogers, contacted our Athletics Director with a product that he thought we should take a look at to see if it applied to the building at Baxter Arena. That product was the Tripleplay IPTV system,” Seth Korber, Technical Consultant at Baxter Arena. “We were instantly blown away by the demonstration and the product, particularly the integrated digital signage capabilities, despite this not being in the original scope of the project, we knew having one unified solution would save a lot of time and energy long term.”
Prior to installing the Tripleplay solution the only way staff at Baxter could distribute communications was on a much smaller scale; digital signage powered by a PC sat by a TV, where the content would be loaded manually onto that PC. To continue this process for almost 200 screens in Baxter Arena would have required a lot of man power and was not a realistic option. Furthermore, there was no IPTV or live streaming product whatsoever running, something Baxter was keen to rectify.
One platform, many features
The Tripleplay system is currently being used in the hospitality suites, on the concourse level where the main walkways are, the main entry ways to the arena, including outside the arena as people are coming in and out, and the ticket office. It is also used in the locker rooms so players can review videos and in the athletics training rooms and conditioning rooms where specific training material and health and safety content is displayed and is used outside the venue doing outside advertising.
“There is a better fan experience that comes from using the Tripleplay system. No matter where in the venue our customers are, whether it be on the public concourse where people can watch the game whilst there at the concession without missing any of the action, or in a suite where they can interact with the touch screen TVs via the Tripleplay Interactive IPTV Portal,” explained Seth Korber.
Customers can watch highlight videos and additional content such as player interviews, training footage and team line-ups and information. They have the ability to look at menus and order directly to the suite, again making sure they don’t need to miss a second of the game. Baxter Arena has also enabled features to let customers browse sports apparel and merchandise that can be purchased at the on-site store and help generate sales.
Having all this content fully loaded on the Tripleplay Interactive IPTV Portal allows Baxter Arena to maximise any potential revenue generating possibilities and ensure premium customers have a 5* game experience. “Another way we earn a ROI through the Tripleplay solution is through advertising revenue. Sponsorships and adverts during games have helped pay for the Tripleplay system for us,” continued Korber.
User-friendly and easy manageability
“The first major benefit from the Tripleplay system is the user-friendly manageability and low overheads of it. One person can manage the system, and the Workflow Management capabilities allow us to have distributed content management.
“For example, the ticket office or concession personnel can all manage the content on their TVs and can change it
as needed without having access to or affecting the rest of the solution. This can even go through an authentication process, making sure no content goes live on site without prior approval.
“The Tripleplay system has worked well for us. I really like that I can train the end users so they can manage their own content, and it’s easy for them because of the primarily drag and drop functionality and features such as QuickDrop and the Tripleplay Event Triggers. It is easy to train staff, even those without a technical background it’s not an all-day type of training – you can train someone in half an hour.”
Expansion plans for the future
“The future for Tripleplay at Baxter Arena is looking pretty bright because they’re constantly doing new updates, adding new features and making the user interface easier to use. I certainly hope to roll the solution out to other parts of the campus besides the Arena, such as student dorms and other student buildings to replace older signage that we have.
Korber summarised, “the cost of Tripleplay was half of other systems we were looking at and the customer service with the product has been great!”