The Championship
The finals of the European Football Championships are being held in England between 8th June 1996 and 30th June 1996. Sixteen national teams will compete for the Championship, having qualified in the preliminary competition from the 47 teams eligible to compete.
The European Football Championships will be the biggest sporting event in Europe in 1996 with matches being broadcast to 150 countries. The 31 matches will be played at eight cities across England: London; Birmingham; Leeds; Liverpool; Manchester; Newcastle; Nottingham; and Sheffield.
The tournament will generate huge logistical challenges - from the accreditation of the 5000 international media personnel, to the co-ordination of the schedules of the 1000 volunteers.
The information challenges will be just as great - the media need accurate, in-depth statistics from 31 matches in eight cities in real time.
To meet these challenges, the Football Association has picked a 'technology team' of four information technology companies, all working together to provide one integrated solution for the European Championships.
The Technology Team
The Technology Team consists of Sema Group, Microsoft, Digital Equipment Corp. and BT.
Sema Group is the official information technology integrator, responsible for the delivery of the whole information technology solution to the Football Association. Sema Group is managing the process of the development of the technology solution, and providing the application software for the operational management, the results system and the information system.
Digital Equipment Corp., official hardware supplier, will be installing, servicing supporting and de-installing the 500 PC's and Notebooks, 55 servers and 40 local area networks (LANs) which will be used in the eight cities to run the Operational, Information and Results systems.
Microsoft, official software supplier, is providing software, technical consulting skills and support for the Technology Team. The system is developed on Microsoft Windows 95, Windows NT server, SQL Server database and Visual Basic 4 development language and also uses System Management Server, Exchange and The Microsoft Office 95. Microsoft Consulting Services is providing technical assistance in the key services in database and application design and is responsible for the distribution (replication) of the data to the eight venues.
BT, official telecommunications supplier, will be installing and maintaining a system of dual routed wide area networks (WANs) linking the eight cities using the high-volume ISDN technology.
The Information Technology Systems at the European Championship
The three systems all work together on a common platform, allowing the exchange of data between systems and facilitating the management of the whole technology solution. There will be media centres and administration centres in each of the eight cities. All the systems in each city will be linked on a LAN, and all the cities will be linked to a central server via an ISDN WAN.
| Operational Management System
The Operational Management System ensures that the logistics of the event run as smoothly as possible. The system covers four key areas: accreditation and media ticketing; VIP management; volunteer management; and materials management.
 Accreditation and media ticketing. Access to the secure areas at EURO 96 (media centres, the dressing rooms, the pitch etc) will only be available to accredited people, journalists, officials or the players themselves: in total between 9,000 and 13, 000 people.
VIP management. There will be 200 VIPs from royalty to UEFA officials expected to be in attendance at the Championships at any one time, with more than 400 VIPs attending at some point - each will be registered, have travel and accommodation arranged and be given a timetable by the system.
Volunteer management. There will be over 1,000 volunteers working at the tournament, including VIP drivers, stadium doormen, ticket clerks, interpreters and accreditation centre operators - the system will register all volunteers.
Materials management. Over 5000 items will need to be registered and their use monitored throughout the event, e.g. cars, mobile phones, walkie-talkies, pagers and hundreds of uniforms will have to be registered and tracked.
The system is being designed on client/server architecture, which means that all appropriate users will be able to share data.
Information System
The Information System will contain details and statistics about the event and its participants in a database format, with an easy-to-use graphical interface designed for the casual press user who is not computer literate. Details about the championships; the players and officials; the venues and cities; match results and current group tables; the qualifying tournament; the tournament schedule; fair play assessments. Press releases and media information sources will also be available. The Information System will be kept up-to date by the information coming from the Results System.
Results System
The Results System will provide clear graphical representation of match and tournament information for broadcasters to use on-screen. The statistics and facts generated can be mixed with the details held in the Information System, providing clear in-depth information to the 6.9 billion TV audience.
For further information contact: Peter Sive or Dave Bennett Manning Selvage & Lee 123 Buckingham Palace Road London SW1W 9SH Tel: 0171 878 3000 Fax: 0171 878 3030
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http://www.microsoft.com/UK/Euro96.htm (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)
