Smarter Spectators at a Smarter Tennis Tournament

The next event being organised by BCS The Chartered Institute for IT in the South West promises to be an interesting look behind-the-scenes at the technology used by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

The presentation, entitled Smarter Spectators at a Smarter Tennis Tournament, will be given by Bill Jinks (Client Technical Advisor for IBM United Kingdom) and will reveal how IBM works with the Club to accommodate the huge demands that the Wimbledon fortnight places on it.

The talk will be on Thursday, 10th March 2011 at 7:30pm at the University of Exeter. It is free and open to members of the public. People interested in attending are asked to register at http://www.bcs-southwest.org where more details about the venue can be found.

The Club accommodates around half a million spectators on-site during Wimbledon fortnight and must also meet the needs of the world’s sporting media with over three quarters of a billion television viewers on 129 TV channels in 173 countries.

During the 2010 Championships, over 11.5 million unique users visited the official wimbledon.org web site, and nearly 307 million page views were served. As the popularity of Wimbledon continues to increase, the Club has managed to maintain the charm of English lawn tennis and keep pace with the demands of modern sport and multi-media broadcasting. Attracting and retaining even bigger audiences in a world of growing choice and distractions is, nevertheless, a challenge.

Since 1990, IBM has been the official IT Supplier to the Club and has worked with it to engage its audiences by introducing innovative multimedia "touch points" where people can connect and interact with The Championships in new and exciting ways.