Bristol’s ‘New’ Ashton Gate Stadium is ready to take its place among England’s top flight stadia, having completed its two-year redevelopment project, ready to officially open its doors this coming weekend.
Bristol’s ‘New’ Ashton Gate Stadium is ready to take its place among England’s top flight stadia, having completed its two-year redevelopment project, ready to officially open its doors this coming weekend.
Bristol Sport has awarded Verteda Ltd a wide-ranging contract for a new fully automated hospitality solution as part of its rebuild of Ashton Gate Stadium, which is home to Bristol City FC and Bristol Rugby. Following a hugely successful season, which saw City promoted to the Championship and Bristol Rugby finish top of its Championship in regular season, this is Ashton Gate’s first fully integrated automated solution specifically designed to meet all hospitality requirements for both clubs.
Bristol Sport manages the commercial interests of its group of sporting clubs, working across rugby; football; basketball and motor racing in Bristol, and aims to replicate the successful approach adopted in other cities such as Barcelona to benefit sports fans.
Frazer Halliday, Chief Technology Officer at Bristol Sport, the company managing the £45m rebuild, said:
Previously, the approach was mostly manual and outsourced, which could obviously have an impact on speed, accuracy and customer service. However, the new stadium released investments to revamp that approach; implementing an automated solution to improve service to fans; to streamline operations; build revenues and manage back-of-house operations.
Halliday added that the stadium will gain far greater control of its operations in real-time, from stock control to workforce management, with faster transactions at the front-end, as he explained:
We can also serve fans better through innovations like the Qjacker app.
Verteda’s integrated solution with Bristol Sport includes:
Bristol Sports’ Halliday advised:
It was an extremely rigorous selection process, with the contract awarded to Verteda based on the quality and performance of its technology, and the company’s huge experience in this sector. We wanted to move to the next step in food and beverages and retail, with a more integrated and automated approach, and we had confidence Verteda would deliver.
Work is underway to transform Ashton Gate into a state-of-the-art 27,000-capacity stadium, which will also see it become the largest conference and events facility in the south-west of England. The 86-year-old Wedlock Stand has been demolished and replaced with a new 6,000-seater South Stand, housing new conference facilities, administration offices, sports bar, café and shops. The Dolman Stand has been completely remodelled with a roof extension and lower-tier replacement. Both stands will be open in time for the 2015-16 season. The third and final phase of the project sees the demolition of the Williams Stand, which will be replaced with a two-tier 11,000-seater stand, which includes a dining hospitality area capable of seating almost a thousand people, 18 corporate boxes and a media centre.
Following an outstanding season, Bristol City’s Manager, Steve Cotterill, was named the League Managers’ Association League One Manager of the Year in May, recognising his contribution to a double-winning season: the Sky Bet League One title and a record-breaking third Johnstone’s Paint Trophy.
Trevor Roberts, Sales Director, Verteda Ltd, said:
We have proven our abilities to deliver stadia-centric solutions, and are thrilled to bring those solutions to Bristol Sport. We’ve delivered more than 50 similar stadium projects in the last few years, which meant Bristol Sport could talk to our customers across the UK and gain insights into the benefits we deliver with integrated solutions.
This solution, he says, will see Bristol Sport and its group of sporting clubs achieve a raft of benefits, “including the complete removal of manual processes in key areas such as cash handling while seeing new opportunities for ordering and service, plus new operational insights for retail operations and improved workforce allocation across permanent, casual and temporary staff.”