StairMedia: Illuminating stadiums and driving commercial growth in football

Avatar
Image via stairmediaglobal.com

It’s likely that football’s TV audiences never actively notice the stairwells of a stadium whilst watching a match. Yet, one company is working to change this by providing football organisations with the opportunity to illuminate its stairwells whilst stimulating economic growth.

StairMedia is a company originating from Spain that installs LED technology for stadium stairwells. Each step is installed with horizontal hardware that, once connected together, delivers an unmissable vertical display.

We currently see leagues and clubs offer televisual space for its sponsors via advertising hoardings, playing shirts and pitch markings. However, StairMedia offers sporting organisations the opportunity to increase its commercial income by maximising the space occupied by banal stadium stairwells.

It is the latest collaboration between technology, marketing and sport sectors, further illustrating the desire of sports organisations to unlock its marketing potential. It also helps to deliver a greater experience for sponsors, who reap the benefits of a highly engaging advertisement that captivates TV audiences.

The company began its sporting journey in basketball, permanently installing its product in the home arena of Spanish basketball club, Saski Baskonia. Since then, it has established high-profile partnerships with some of football’s most recognisable stadiums and organisations.

Most recognisable is Wembley Stadium, where its TV facing stairwells display the logo of the England football team’s official mobile network partner, EE, during their games. The English FA has also utilised StairMedia for its FA Cup semi-finals and finals, helping the competition’s sponsors capture the attention of viewers nationally and internationally.

Later, English powerhouse Manchester City capitalised on StairMedia’s prominence by permanently installing its technology on the stairwells of the Etihad Stadium. This deal has been replicated by Liga MX clubs Chivas de Guadalajara and Santos Laguna.

At the centre of StairMedia’s product is the use of LED technology to illuminate each step on a stadium stairwell. The use of LED in football is not new, with elite stadiums and local grounds turning towards the option for powering floodlights, scoreboards, big screens and advertising hoardings. Therefore, using the technology delivered by StairMedia ticks an important environmental sustainability box for football organisations.

Another plus is the high levels of energy efficiency and durability that comes with LED products, making them a more financially viable option. This ultimately contributes to the return on investment football organisations hope to achieve when installing StairMedia technology.

Behind this is a software system that seamlessly integrates with existing stadium technology, making installation easy for stadium staff and contributes to a highly engaging image for television audiences.

The NRL pioneered StairMedia’s innovative product for its finals series, evidencing its potential in the Australian sports stadia market. This represents a massive opportunity for Football Australia, and the Australian Professional Leagues (APL), to entice current and future sponsors through StairMedia’s game-changing product.

At a time where Australian football is coordinating a major expansion effort, engaging with innovative companies like StairMedia would help unlock new marketing potential. This would play a major role in helping the aforementioned organisations reach its key targets and achieve greater financial stability.

Depending on the timeframe and costing structure, Football Australia or the APL could seek to implement the technology incrementally – as done in the United Kingdom – showcasing it at major events such as the A Leagues Grand Finals, Australia Cup Finals, and World Cup qualifying matches.

Capturing every inch of televisual space for sponsorship and marketing is not an easy task, but through technology companies like StairMedia, football organisations can improve their commercial standing in an environmentally sustainable manner.

We expect to see the stairwells of football stadiums continue to come to life, as StairMedia expands its operation across the globe.

Previous ArticleNext Article

The Spreadsheet Is Dead: Majestri’s Fix for How Clubs Actually Assess Players

Avatar
If you’ve ever sat through a club’s end-of-season review, you’ll know the drill. A coach pulls out a folder of notes, someone half-remembers what a player was like back in Round 3 and a parent quietly wonders what they actually got for their rego fees beyond a team photo. Football club platform Majestri says it has a fix for that, and it’s built directly into its Player Assessment module.

Why clubs bother assessing players in the first place

According to Majestri, clubs run player assessments for one of three reasons – usually more than one at once. Some are chasing genuine development, using the data to lift the level across their high-performance squads. Others are after a fairer way to pick teams, putting every player on the same measurable scale so selection is based on evidence rather than a coach’s gut feel about who “looks the part.” And for clubs operating under a Football Australia or state federation licence, assessments at set intervals often aren’t optional – they’re a compliance requirement, with the paperwork to prove it when asked.

Whatever the motivation, Majestri’s pitch is the same: don’t let that assessment data die in a spreadsheet on someone’s laptop.

Build your own assessment, your way

There’s no one-size-fits-all template here. The Assessment Designer lets technical directors set their own criteria, sort them into whatever categories their coaching staff already use – think core skills, possession, defending, attacking – and decide what each point on the rating scale actually means. Crucially, every criterion also gets a comment field, because a bare number rarely tells the full story of a player’s development.

The Assessment Module Builder for an NPL Juniors assessment
The Assessment Module Builder, showing an NPL Juniors assessment with a 1-10 rating scale banded from under performing through to excelling and role-specific criteria grouped into core skills, possession, defending and attacking. Source: Majestri.

Build it once and it’s reusable every time that assessment cycle comes around, so every player and every coach – is working off the same yardstick.

Something for the parents to actually take home

One of the more relatable pain points Majestri is targeting: most families never see much tangible return from a season of fees beyond a team photo. Player Assessment addresses that with report cards – colour-coded against the same scale coaches used, grouped by category with averages calculated automatically, and delivered as a PDF or an interactive web page a parent can read without needing a coaching badge themselves.

A player report card for an under-15 player
A report card for an under-15 player, colour-coded from under performing to excelling, with a score for every criterion and a group average across core skills, possession, defending and attacking. Source: Majestri.

 

Turning the numbers into something useful

The real value, though, sits in what Majestri calls the Player Analysis Lab. This is where clubs can plot a player against their team-mates or an entire age group across two categories at once, spotting clusters and outliers at a glance. Every score gets read against the group average – so a “7” actually means something in context – and clubs can report at the broad category level or drill into individual fields underneath. The results can be filtered down and exported for selection meetings or grading purposes.

The Player Analysis Lab comparing players in an under-15 and under-16 squad
The Player Analysis Lab comparing seven players across under-15 and under-16 squads, with a scatter plot, a sortable table of scores against the player average, and controls for choosing which categories and fields to report on. Source: Majestri.

The admin side nobody enjoys, made easier

Beyond the flashy analytics, there’s a practical layer built for the volunteers actually running the process:

  • Sweep monitoring – a quick view of which assessments are done and which are still outstanding, organised into defined assessment periods so progress can be tracked against peers.
  • Individual development plans – every player gets a personalised plan, and clubs can group common improvement areas to run cross-team training sessions that lift the whole club rather than just one squad.
  • Access control – coaches and technical staff can only see assessments for the teams they’re responsible for, and completed assessments are only visible to people linked to that player’s registration.
“Hard numbers to draw on when you review coaching staff and curriculum – and something tangible for the players and parents who pay the fees.” – Majestri

 

The bigger picture

Majestri frames all of this as sitting on top of the club’s own data – assessment results live on each player’s profile inside the platform rather than in a spreadsheet that walks out the door when a technical director moves on. For committees, it also means hard numbers to lean on when reviewing coaching staff or curriculum, rather than relying on anecdote.

It’s a fairly clear read on where club administration software is heading: less about digitising paperwork for its own sake, and more about making the data clubs already collect actually work for player development, team selection and compliance  without adding to the workload of the volunteers who run the show.

For more information on Majestri’s Player Assessment module, visit majestri.com.au/player-assessment.

AI-powered camera system makes Supercup debut in live football production

Avatar
Image Credit: 2670469575

AI-powered camera technology has moved another step closer to mainstream sports broadcasting. This comes after it was deployed for the international tactical feed of the Franz Beckenbauer Supercup between Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich.

The system, supplied by Broadcast Solutions, combined Studio Automated’s AI camera automation platform with an Egripment HotHead 3 remote head during the fixture at Signal Iduna Park on 22 August. The Bundesliga and host broadcaster Sportcast have regularly used the season-opening match as a testing ground for new technologies.

Rather than simply tracking the ball or individual players, Studio Automated’s technology analyses the wider match scene and uses broadcast production principles to determine framing and camera movements.

The system was used to operate a camera positioned on the stadium’s main camera gantry. As a result, the footage was available as part of the international tactical production.

The deployment is significant because it demonstrates how AI camera operation can move from trade-show demonstrations into live professional broadcast environments. The companies first showcased the integrated technology at SportsInnovation earlier this year.

The system operates on standard on-premises hardware and does not require cloud connectivity or a calibration process. Its low-latency operation also allows the remote head to respond in a way designed to replicate the movement of a conventional manually operated camera.

Importantly, the technology does not replace the wider production team. The automated camera operates as another source within a multi-camera environment. In this setup, the production team retains control over which images make it to air. This positions AI as a tool for expanding production capabilities rather than removing the role of existing broadcast teams.

For broadcasters and production companies, the potential extends beyond major Bundesliga fixtures. Automated camera positions could help reduce the operational requirements associated with remote and lower-cost productions. At the same time, they can maintain a higher standard of coverage.

Broadcast Solutions will continue showcasing the technology with Studio Automated and Egripment at IBC 2026 in Amsterdam. At this event, the companies will demonstrate integrated workflows for sports production.

Most Popular Topics

Editor Picks

Send this to a friend