German Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund will become the first football team to utilise innovative new virtual advertising technology at its home stadium after a two-season deal was agreed.
The technology will be used at all 17 Bundesliga matches at Signal Iduna Park this season. Lagardère Sports, Dortmund’s exclusive marketing partner, will be responsible for the overall implementation and global marketing of the technology, which has been licensed by the sports rights agency.
The German Football League (DFL) in March approved the use of virtual perimeter advertising in the Bundesliga, with a system developed by technology company Supponor and Lagardère Sports being the first to be granted the green light.
Lagardère Sports and Supponor, along with LED technology provider ADI, the DFL and its subsidiary Sportcast earlier concluded the final test of the technology. On February 26, the Bundesliga match between Dortmund and FC Augsburg at Signal Iduna Park saw an additional world feed, provided outside German-speaking markets, broadcast live for the first time.
The virtual advertising perimeter technology, developed with Supponor and ADI, is fully integrated with the regular broadcast of a match using perimeter boards and optics technology. The result is that the advertising space is multiplied virtually, through the creation of broadcast standard virtual overlays of the physical perimeter boards.
Whilst audiences in Germany will not experience any difference in the stadium or on screen, different brands can occupy the same space on the existing perimeter boards and advertise to different markets via the TV broadcast.
Carsten Cramer, Borussia Dortmund’s managing director for sales and marketing, said: “It is important for us to constantly develop our platform for our partners and to embrace innovations, which make sense for and fit to Borussia Dortmund. Especially with regard to the internationalisation of our club, virtual advertising offers enormous possibilities as it enables our regional partners individual ways to appear around BVB’s matches.”
Philipp Hasenbein, managing director of Lagardère Sports Germany and president of European football at Lagardère Sports, added: “The club and we have always had the same innovative mentality and that’s why it’s so wonderful that we are now setting a joint example for the further internationalisation of the Bundesliga and thereby creating decisive digital added value and global growth opportunities for the Borussia.”
Image: Валерий Дед
