Case Study: The America’s Cup 2024

The America’s Cup is a the world’s most prestigious sailing competition, and the longest continuously held sporting event in the world. Attracting the cream of the sailing world’s talent, the America’s Cup has grown into a thrilling spectator sport featuring high performance yachts in glamorous locations. 

In 2024, the 37th edition of the competition was held for the first time in Barcelona, starting in August and running all the way though to October.

Digital signage powered by ScreenCloud played a starring role in the 37th America’s Cup. And as we shall see, the applications for the displays went far beyond simply streaming live footage of the race to fans on dry land.

The challenges

With the event spanning almost two months, and with most of the action happening several kilometers off-shore, there were multiple challenges for the IT team behind the America’s Cup.

1. Connecting the site

The IT team needed to connect different sites from the fan zones and the race villages, to the behind the scenes locations such as the media centre. The footprint for the 37th America’s Cup stretched from the Port of Barcelona, all the way to the Bogatell neighbourhood, around 5 kms away.

2. Unique content demands

Teams at these different locations needed to have control over their own content. Some stages opened and closed at different times; hosted different events such as live DJs or post-race interviews; or were not open to the public.

3. Easy to use and scalable

Tthe signage network needed to be easily scalable, with no tricky technical setups. This was due to the fact that different areas of the event might occasionally demand extra screens, or certain partners may want to use the digital signage displays from ScreenCloud themselves. 

4. Security

For an event of this size and scope, security needed to be of the highest standard. As a high profile sporting event working with partners including Louis Vuitton, Omega, Emirates and Puig, reputations are at stake.

Watch this interview with Andrew Ferguson of OneThirty West as he explains how the solution was used, and some of the challenges it solved. 

Leslie Ryan, event director for the America’s Cup said, “I’m super impressed. One of the things that we’ve struggled with in previous events is to find one solution with multiple facets to it… To find a system that has the agility to change… So the great thing this time is to find one system that can do what we need, rather than needing multiple solutions”.

Delivering digital signage at the America’s Cup

The IT logistics at the America’s Cup in Barcelona were handled by OneThirty West, a London based strategic IT consultancy. Over two years, the team at OneThirty West helped to design and implement the audio visual layout, including broadcasting the live footage from the boats themselves to the screens across the site.

OneThirty West had been using ScreenCloud before in other events, and they saw that the tool could be used to great effect at the America’s Cup.

Here was a tool that allowed easy cloud based control, group or granular permissions for content creation and effortless scalability. Not to mention the highest standards of security for a digital signage tool.

Eva Piza, event manager for the race village at the America’s Cup said, “The best thing is that we can use this tool ourselves. We don’t need to rely on IT or a technical team, it’s a tool that we can use”.

As well as broadcasting live footage from the event, OneThirty West also wanted to stream race highlights, display scheduling messages, stream live footage from other areas of the site and present information from local updates to messages from event partners. 

ScreenCloud would be used across the site including:

• Inside the America’s Cup main office within the World Trade Centre in Barcelona
• Within the Media Centre for the America’s Cup
• The main race village stages and screens
• Spectator areas along the Barcelona seafront
• Within a race competitors main base
• Additional screens for event partners across the site

In total, ScreenCloud digital signage was used on around 50 screens across the America’s Cup during the event.

While many of the screens would be sharing similar content, some areas of the site needed to display specific information such as local schedules or clock countdowns.

Professional support and custom solutions

One of the main benefits of ScreenCloud as a digital signage provider is that we provide an unrivalled professional support service. For our large enterprise clients or events such as the America’s Cup, this can be extremely valuable. 

ScreenCloud’s professional services team were instrumental in helping OneThirty West to onboard the team members who would be using the software during the event. Whether simply accessing the dashboard, using the ScreenCloud app, or knowing which apps or integrations are available, getting the team up to speed is critical to client success with our tool. 

As well as providing access to over 80 app integrations, the ScreenCloud pro services team were on hand to help create some custom tools for the event. This was mainly in the form of custom screens in event partner branding and styling, but also assistance with integrating the live race feeds.

As Andrew Ferguson, director of OneThirty West says, “Its important for us and the event to have (very) responsive support, because everything starts on time here and there are no second chances.”
“We’ve tried other digital signage tools in the past, but when we found ScreenCloud, it was a no-brainer for us”.