Crystal Palace FC eliminate restricted view for visually impaired fans

It’s a late September afternoon at Selhurst Park near Croydon in South London, which has been the home of Crystal Palace Football Club for the past 100 years. Comedy fans might also recognise the ground as the base for fictional club AFC Richmond in AppleTV+ sit com Ted Lasso.

Sandwiched between some terraced housing and a Sainsbury’s supermarket, it doesn’t feel like the most auspicious location to be reporting on an innovative tech development.

And yet Steve Parish’s club, affectionately known as “The Eagles”, achieved this on 21 September this year, with a private 5G use case, which has not only improved the experience for one fan community, but also has the potential to expand into other areas.

Eagle eyes

During the Premier League game between Crystal Palace and Manchester United, several Palace fans with low vision were invited to wear headsets to enjoy the early season game in real-time, from any seat in the stadium, alongside their friends and family.

The headsets comprised of a vision enhancement system patented by assistive tech firm GiveVision.

Founded in 2014 in conjunction with Moorfields Eye Hospital and other universities, GiveVision started out with a home device that helped people with low vision to read and watch TV – even enabling one couple to see their baby’s face for the first time.

And then one user took the headset to a Spice Girls reunion gig, which proved game changing in many ways, prompting the organisation to do more research into the events space.

The latest version of the headset (now in its fifth iteration) possesses technology that modulates a broadcast feed from the cameras filming at the event into a bright, sharp stereoscopic light, projected via the headset to the working part of the retina.

This stimulates the user’s remaining vision to enable them to see details more clearly.

“The wonderful thing about this feed is that the camera operators are always following the best of the action. And if you have a visual impairment sometimes it’s quite difficult to know what to focus your attention on,” says GiveVision’s head of operations, Joanna Liddington.

Liddington adds that there’s a second setting on the headset too – in the form of a camera which allows users to magnify the view “like you would do when you zoom into a picture on your phone.”

“There’s generally a 50:50 split between people who prefer to use the headset camera to look at what they want to look at and the other half who would rather watch the operator’s feed,” she adds.

To ensure the feed is delivered in real time, without any lag or interruptions, to every seat in the stadium, the right connectivity solution was crucial.

And there isn’t anyone who can explain why a low latency rate was needed better than a fan who struggles on match days to keep up with what’s happening on the pitch.

According to Eagles fan Stephen Anderson, a council worker from Harrow, the experience of being a visually impaired fan at a football match is one step removed from most other supporters.

“It’s like you are there but you’re not there. When you don’t see a handball and you can’t shout ‘handball!’ along with everyone else. You’ll see fans giving it to the ref: but you can’t form a judgement.

“There’s just such power in being able to say, ‘I saw it!’ and I think for many non-visually impaired people that might be a difficult concept to appreciate.

“The fact that, seeing a goal with your own eyes. Seeing a foul, seeing all those things as they happen, and being part of the live narrative.”

Private 5G

GiveVision tried several solutions to power the headsets in the two and a half years it’s been collaborating with the club. However, the public mobile network proved too congested to use during match days and WiFi does not possess the low latency needed to stream feeds instantaneously.

The accessibility tech firm reached out to Shared Access, a neutral host provider that invests in infrastructure and leases it out to different mobile operators.

The company started building out emergency service networks before moving on to grass roots sports organisations and then larger clubs. One recent project saw Shared Access design, install and fund a distributed antenna system (DAS) to serve Tottenham Hotspur FC in Northeast London. This also included macro coverage and a small cell network through Haringey, around the stadium so that Tottenham fans could enjoy connectivity as soon as they arrived at the train station all the way into and around the stadium.

Instead of each mobile operator installing its own separate network equipment in the stadium, Shared Access installs one single network system that all mobile operators can use.

This system includes antennas set up around the stadium to provide strong, focused coverage in different areas, ensuring that everyone—no matter their carrier— gets good reception.

According to Sam Jackman, Shared Access’s chief development officer, a private 5G network was the most effective way of streaming the game into the headset.

“It benefits from the speed, and we can control who uses it by having a sim card, which you need to log onto the network.

As a neutral host operator, the firm was able to apply to Ofcom for about 100MHz of lower power spectrum, explains Shared Access’s Future technologies director Paul Coffey.

“We’ve built it in the n77 which runs from 3.7MHz to 4.2 MHz and we’ve deployed our own private secure network. Low powered spectrum is perfect for events like this where we can tailor it to where we need it most,” he adds.

Footballing first

The GiveVision and Shared Access partnership with Crystal Palace enabled the club to be the first in the UK to use a 5G network and the first club in history to offer a permanent vision enhancement system for fans at the stadium.

“It really has changed my experience in terms of coming to football matches,” Anderson remarks.

“Even a couple of years ago, you would never have imagined me doing this. I’m able to see the fouls, the goals, the penalties, the free kicks, the yellow cards. And I’m also able to hold the referee in the same level of contempt as everybody else! Equality is the main point here.”

At the match that Saturday, seven people used the headsets although there is capacity for 15 according to Jackman.

“It could be scaled in the future. We have about 100MHz so we could double or treble this number of users. So, it gives us scalability if the club finds more users.”

For the club and others who commit to the technology, the private 5G network can also be applied to other use cases around the stadium.

Identified use cases include support connectivity for WiFi in tough to reach areas or to enhance the speed of delivery and security for point-of-sale operators within the stadium.

Broadcasters could also make use of the network to have a secure network available for use inside the stadium, or to communicate from inside to out during events.

“Security cameras could be run on a private network, as well as other types of security needs such as body cams that could then send live updates to a control room rather than have to be downloaded and reviewed later,” Jackman also suggests.

Premier buy-in

Now that Palace has a working example of the tech up and running, chairman Steve Parish – a business entrepreneur who started his career in computer graphics – wants other clubs to pick up the mantle.

“We have pioneered this technology because we want everybody to come and enjoy the games, whatever their personal situation, whatever their circumstances. This is another step forward on accessibility for everybody,” he explains

“Obviously we want to help the supporters that come to our ground, but we’re hopeful that this expands across the Premier League. We don’t want to be the only club doing this!”

This sentiment is also echoed by former Liverpool and England player Michael Owen, whose son, James, has a degenerative eye condition.

“It’s great to see this sort of technology being introduced at Premier League games to help visually impaired fans enjoy the game. What GiveVision and Shared Access are doing to increase accessibility and help fans see the game they love is incredible. Hopefully more clubs follow,” says Owen.

According to GiveVision’s Liddington, the firm has started doing work with Bournemouth and Everton football clubs and she seems confident that more will follow. In the meantime, she adds, it is working on the next iteration. So, what would V6 offer?

“At the moment, the headset works for 95% of visually impaired people but it would be good to have one for everyone. Everyone’s sight loss is so different it would be amazing to develop different more tailored settings for different eye conditions.”

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