When a Premier League football club approached us to overhaul the digital signage across their stadium, the brief was ambitious: replace a fragmented, ageing system of screens managed by three different platforms with a single, unified signage network that could handle matchday operations, hospitality content, wayfinding, and commercial advertising — all from one dashboard.
The result was a deployment of 340 screens across the stadium, managed by a team of four people using Hangar.Media. This is how we did it.
The Challenge
The stadium's existing signage infrastructure had grown organically over a decade. Different areas of the venue used different platforms, installed by different contractors at different times. The concourse screens ran one CMS. The hospitality suites used another. The fan zone screens were managed through a third system entirely. There was no central content library, no unified scheduling, and no way to push an emergency message to every screen simultaneously.
On matchdays, the operations team spent hours manually updating screens across the venue. Content changes required logging into multiple systems, uploading the same assets multiple times, and hoping that nothing failed during the match. Non-matchday content — conferences, concerts, community events — was an afterthought, with most screens defaulting to static sponsor logos between fixtures.
The core problem was not the screens themselves — it was the fragmentation. Three platforms meant three sets of credentials, three content workflows, three points of failure, and no single view of what was happening across the venue.
The Solution
We consolidated all 340 screens onto the Hangar.Media platform. This included:
- 142 concourse screens: Located throughout the ground-level concourses, displaying wayfinding, food and beverage menus, sponsor content, and matchday information
- 86 hospitality suite screens: Premium displays in executive boxes and lounges showing personalised welcome messages, match statistics, and hospitality-specific content
- 48 fan zone screens: Large-format displays in the external fan zone showing live feeds, social media walls, and sponsor activations
- 38 retail and food outlet screens: Menu boards and promotional displays in the stadium's shops and food concessions
- 26 wayfinding and information screens: Positioned at entrances, stairwells, and key decision points throughout the venue
Content Strategy: Matchday vs Non-Matchday
The stadium operates in two fundamentally different modes, and the signage system needed to handle both seamlessly.
Matchday mode activates automatically four hours before kick-off. Screens throughout the venue switch from default content to matchday-specific playlists: team lineups, fixture information, safety messages, food and drink specials, and sponsor activations. The concourse screens display wayfinding information tailored to the specific event (different entrance configurations for different fixtures). Hospitality suite screens show personalised welcome messages with guest names, table assignments, and bespoke menus.
Non-matchday mode is the default state. The stadium hosts conferences, concerts, community events, and stadium tours throughout the week. Each event type has its own content template that populates automatically when an event is scheduled. Between events, screens display a mix of club content, community messaging, and commercial advertising.
Deployment Process
The rollout was completed in phases over eight weeks, working around the fixture schedule:
- Weeks 1-2: Network infrastructure audit and upgrade. We ensured every screen location had reliable network connectivity (wired Ethernet for fixed screens, enterprise Wi-Fi for portable displays)
- Weeks 3-4: Player hardware installation and pairing. Each screen was connected to a Hangar.Media player and registered in the platform. Screens were organised into logical groups by location and function
- Weeks 5-6: Content migration and creation. All existing content was audited, migrated to the central media library, and organised into playlists. New content templates were created for matchday and non-matchday modes
- Weeks 7-8: Testing, training, and go-live. The operations team was trained on the platform, and the system was tested during two home fixtures before the legacy platforms were decommissioned
Results
Six months after deployment, the results were significant:
- Content update time dropped from 3+ hours of manual work per matchday to under 15 minutes (most of it automated)
- Screen uptime improved from an estimated 78% to 99.4%, measured and reported automatically through the platform's monitoring
- Commercial revenue from signage-based advertising increased by 40%, driven by the ability to sell time-specific slots across specific screen groups rather than static placements
- Staffing for signage operations reduced from a rotating team of six to a core team of four, with time freed for content creation rather than system maintenance
The biggest win was not technical — it was operational. Moving from "which system do I log into for this screen?" to "every screen in the venue is in one dashboard" transformed how the team thought about signage. It went from a maintenance burden to a communication tool they actively wanted to use.
Lessons Learned
Every large deployment teaches you something. The key takeaways from this project:
- Network first: No signage platform can compensate for unreliable network infrastructure. Invest in the network before you invest in the screens
- Group screens by function, not location: Managing screens by what they do (wayfinding, menu boards, sponsor content) is more practical than managing them by where they are
- Automate the defaults: The operations team should only need to intervene for exceptions. Everything else — matchday transitions, event-specific content, sponsor rotations — should happen automatically based on schedules and rules
- Plan for non-matchdays: A stadium is empty more days than it is full. The signage strategy for non-matchdays is just as important as the matchday strategy