How we built it: Powering Premier League and Scottish Premiership football clubs with intelligent mobile connectivity | IoT Insider Podcast Episode 30

Bernie McPhillips
Hi, everyone and thank you for tuning in to the IoT Insider, I’m Bernie McPhillips, Sales Director here at Pangea. And today, I’m absolutely delighted to be joined by David Mitchell, our Business Development Director. And this is your first podcast with us, David. Is that right?

David Mitchell
It is Bernie. Yeah. Thank you very much for the warm welcome. Yeah, really looking forward to this. I’ve been with Pangea, what, nearly six months end of October loving my time here as a business development director meeting lots of new telco partners and other types of partners within the industry. So yeah, having a great time at it, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Bernie McPhillips
Awesome. Great to hear David, time flies and you’re having fun. That’s what I believe anyway. So as we do on most of these podcasts, we’ll be taking a look at how we’ve helped a partner use intelligent mobile connectivity to support a customer to develop new revenue opportunities and to surprise and delight. Before we do that, with it being your first podcast, David, I think it’d be awesome. Just for you to tell us a few interesting facts about yourself.

David Mitchell
Well, industry facts, I’ve been in telecoms for nearly 20 years. I ran my own telecom reseller business in Somerset and South Bristol, selling an array of products from Hosted Telephony, to connectivity, to IoT. Really enjoyed the industry and wanted to stay in that industry. And IoT was, for me, the next big thing, the growth on IoT is huge. And Pangea really fit the bill for me. Really fast forward thinking business. So yeah, I’m really, really pleased to be with Pangea, the team massive growth aspirations for Pangea. And for me personally, and long may it continue.

Bernie McPhillips
Superb, David, I genuinely feel that we could end the podcast right there. Your passion, your excitement, and I couldn’t agree more and for what it’s worth, and we consider ourselves the fortunate ones that you’ve chosen us and joined our business. And time certainly flies when you’re having fun, almost six months later, here we are. But you mentioned how backbone the IT market is. And there’s one stat that really stands out for me. And when people ask why we do what we do, there are close to 8 billion people on the planet, yet there are 28 billion devices. And of those 28 billion devices, 18 billion of them, so way more than half are deemed to be IoT devices. And the rate of growth in those IoT devices is far greater than the growth in the human population. So if you’re sat right here today, deciding which direction you’re going to take your business, or you’re starting off a new business, and the decision is am I going to connect people, or am I going to connect things? I know the choice I would make, and that’s a choice we have made is Pangea, that’s what we do, we connect things, we connect people, we’re a provider of intelligent mobile data. And we’re connecting all of these things all over the world and making them smart and retrieving data from them. And I truly believe the same as yourself, it’s absolutely where the market is gonna go. So I think most of our listeners will know and a lot of our listeners will be partners of ours already. It’s now a community of close to 500 partners, and thank you to every one of you. We’re a provider of intelligent mobile data, relationships with all of the UK network providers, and international providers gives us access to 960 networks in 185 countries. And we can just do some really cool things like Multi-network services. So your devices connect based on signal strength and its location, we can offer true static IPs at network level, we can filter content, we can lock SIMs to devices, we can build flexible tariffs, long term contracts, short term contracts, and that’s why our partners choose us. But we’re here today specifically to talk about one particular kind of use case and one sector that we’re fortunate enough to be involved in, and that’s sports stadiums, and in this particular instance, football and the very top tier of football, so the Premier League, in England and the Scottish Premier League as well. So we’re fortunate enough to have five clubs across those two top tiers of UK football currently connected. So suppose first of all people would be thinking why would a football club need solutions like yours, Pangea? So we think of some of the trials and tribulations that are faced by these clubs. And indeed, everybody when we go to these stadiums, they’re often huge structures, lots of steel, lots of thick, stone, concrete, etc. It can be difficult for mobile signals to penetrate and indeed, lots of people attend them. So these are some of the things that we struggle with aren’t they David, when you’re trying to go online?

David Mitchell
Exactly. Or you know, if I go to my local team Bristol City, you know, when there’s nearly 25,000 there on a Saturday afternoon, you’ll struggle to get a mobile network or you’re trying to update some information on social media about Bristol City losing 2-0 you struggle, and because of the vast amount of people there on demand, but also as you say the infrastructure of those buildings bouncing signals around left right and centre.

Bernie McPhillips
And it’s what the people are trying to do. The football clubs and the fans when they arrive, what are they trying to do now with their data service as well. So if you think these stadiums now, largely cashless, electronic ticketing, one form or another, they’re trying to monetise the matchday experience; selling souvenirs, snacks, refreshments, matchday programmes, etc. And all of these things now need electronic payments, kiosks set up around the stadiums. There’s Hosted Telephony in those kiosks with the staff needing support or stock, there’s typically CCTV for security. People that arrive using their devices to get in touch with loved ones share the experience with people who can’t be there on the day, post on social media, place a bet on your smartphone app. So more and more people are arriving in these stadiums, they’re becoming really, really data hungry now. And these football clubs, they want to stay up with the times they want to be able to create that digital experience for their fans. And so they go to their trusted telecom resellers, their IT providers with these challenges and say, Hey, how can you help us and thankfully, you know, a lot of these organisations partner with Pangea, so one of the most straightforward things we can do as you mentioned about; signal, you know can vary vastly from within the stadium, one end of the stadium to another, which is typically quite a big geography anyway. Will there be cell sites positioned around the stadium, one end, you get a really strong signal on one network, but it might vary vastly, by the time you walk down to the other end of the stadium so we can provide our Multi-network services. Our listeners and our partners should know an awful lot about those today. One of the mainstay propositions that we’ve got. A single SIM, which connects to all of the networks in the UK, based on signal strength, so whether you’re at one in the stadium or the other, you’re going to be picking up whichever signal is at its strongest.

David Mitchell
Yeah, I think one of the things about those Multi-network offerings as well Bernie, is the fact it’s unsteered. So there are Multi-network offerings that will steer to a particular network. Whereas in this sort of case study, the unsteered works brilliantly due to the volume and as you say, the cell sites.

Bernie McPhillips
Absolutely, and almost criminal of me not to mention that, you’re absolutely right. A steered would just connect to one preferred network and cling on to it for dear life is not typically gonna offer the best experience. Then there’s other things that the customer may well need. So if they’re going to run Hosted Telephony, CCTV, even some forms of payment terminals, you will need a Static IP. So we can offer true Static IPs at network level. So we’re emulating something that typically could only ever be able to be done on a fixed line in the past. So now this is completely transportable, pack it all away when it’s not match day, bring it all out again, when it is match day, connect all of your devices with a Static IP, lots of stability across all of your hosted solutions. And we can then build flexible tariffs, because football is a seasonal sport. Kind of out of the typical seasons this year with a World Cup taking place in November. But definitely a seasonal sport, lots of fixtures during the autumn, winter, and spring months, and then not really much at all in the summer. And even the amount of fixtures per month can vary, depending on if you’re in the cup ,out of the cup. In Europe, out of Europe, how many home fixtures in the league. So we can offer flexible tariffs. So we call it Instanet, you know all about Instanet David. So a flexible tariff goes up and down based on utilisation. So it starts off on a low tier moves up if needed. So then we’re able to offer real optimisation across the services for these types of customers, aren’t we?

David Mitchell
Absolutely. And I think Instanet is, for me not just on this case study, but with all of my partners that I’ve been speaking with and signing up and building relationships with, at the end of the day, these guys want to maximise as much margin out of each of these deals. You know, whether it’s a low data SIM or an unlimited, whatever it might be. It’s all about the margin. And the Instanet model just gives them that opportunity to really maximise on profit. So like you said as the football season, etc, if we’ve built a number of tiers and tariffs, and they don’t use it, we’ll just charge them the lowest tariff, but their end user may just be, it could be a managed service that they sell to their end user, therefore they are selling for a fixed price. So seasonal trends work very, very well for them. Yeah, brilliant little solution.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, you know we talked about fluctuation in usage and fluctuation couldn’t get much greater than with a football club, when there’s literally, you know, could be five, six home games in a typical month in the winter. And then it completely closes down between the end of May and August and nothing happens at all, so they’re not paying for data that they don’t really need. So what we typically equip these clubs with are 4G Multi-network SIMs, completely unsteered. David, thank you for mentioning that, again, 4G routers, high gain antennas, with a Static IP, that gives you all of the stability that you need when you’ve got your hosted solutions running over there. We made sure the connectivity was secure. The data plans were flexible. And because of our private APNs that we’ve got in place with our network partners. Our data effectively travels separately, so when data hits a cell site it effectively travels through its own route into the core network, not with your standard business and consumer traffic. So all of a sudden, you know, one of the things that we’ve mentioned before you’ve got all of these people turning up, 25,000 people at Bristol, you know, many 10s of 1000s at Premier League football clubs, etc, they can be really difficult to get online as consumers. For these Premier League clubs, they still need to process these payments, their transactions need to break out. So by putting these private APNs in place, the data travels separately, less congestion, better network performance, and everything happens exactly as it should. So it leaves the club to focus on what they’re meant to do best; play football, entertain people, win trophies, and knowing that all of their IT, all of their connectivity, they’ve partnered with the right people to get success on that side of things so they can concentrate on success on the pitch keeping fans connected, keeping the club’s solutions connected, so that they can monetise that matchday experience, fans can buy the souvenirs that they want, stay refreshed, and all the things that are important to them while they’re there. It then kind of just grew arms and legs a little bit from there I suppose, with one of the clubs in particular, undertaking an overseas trip over to the USA. And they were concerned about security, data security, having a dedicated connectivity for themselves. They’re out on training pitches, and they typically take up quite remote locations for the training camps, they don’t really want to be bothered too much by the press and have too much intrusion while they’re preparing for the season ahead. So we gave them all of the connectivity they needed in the US. Multi-network connectivity, Static IPs if needed for the hosted solutions, Multi-network to connect to the best signal in their location. So just emulating everything we’ve done for them here in the stadiums, but did it in rural locations over in the USA, for this particular Premier League football team to stay connected to all of the things that are important to them.

David Mitchell
And I suppose, you know, with a Premier League football team touring to wherever they go, the US whatever. It’s not just a squad of 11. It’s it’s a huge outfit that go. And if you can imagine the actual cost outlay, if all of those connections are roaming all the time, where we were able to centralise it with our buying power and our technology, and offer them sort of a one stop solution, on one of our managed routers to offer that international roaming. So to simplify the whole process for them and probably save them and absolute fortune.

Bernie McPhillips
I hadn’t even thought of that, David, but you’re absolutely right. Even Premier League football clubs have budgets right, you wouldn’t think it sometimes when you read the back pages and how much they’re paying on the next international superstar. But they’ve got budgets for all these things. So what a great way to keep control of your costs by having your connectivity, all in one place. Centralised hubs, routers, people connecting to them, as you say, rather than having all of the players, all of the coaches, medical staff, they take their own chef’s abroad with them, they leave nothing to chance, you know, there’s so much science goes into these sports these days. And the connectivity is now one of the things that is taken into account maybe a little bit off-piste, but people think about it when they’re doing everything and anything now, you know, if you’re buying a car, is it connected, can I see where it is? Can I control it? Can I control the temperature, can I lock the doors if I’ve forgotten to? Even when choosing a house I’m hearing people buying houses and they’re interested in what type of connectivity is available? Is there fibre to the premise? Who is the provider? What kind of speeds can I expect? Connectivity just seems to be at the core of everything that we do now. And these top tier Premier League football clubs are absolutely no different at all. What a world we live in, as we said before, you know all these billions of devices and just not going to go away anytime soon is it?

David Mitchell
Absolutely and I suppose as well. Because these are managed services, you know our partners or the end customer can actually manage the data through what’s going on on these devices. Not having to wait until the next bill month. We’ve got bit of a shock bill, we can actually see real time data, what’s going through these devices. And we’ve got other applications like Pangea Protect, so we can monitor, you know what people are browsing and that type of thing to keep it really secure.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, absolutely David, you’re right. A fully managed service, everything visible in real time via our award winning Pangea Portal. Again, it helps to control costs, make sure nothing unexpected happens and just show’s doesn’t it, everyone has a budget, even a Premier League football club. And all of these opportunities that we talk about on these podcasts, every single one of them whether it’s connecting 1000s of bikes across the city, or 1000s of streetlights in a 15 year contract. Now Premier League football clubs, global airlines, every single one of them, won through a partner. We’re partner only David right? Why do we keep that up?

David Mitchell
Well, yeah, that’s right Bernie we are partner only. We do not have a direct sales force. We’ve got no interest in that within our business. So we are there to support and handhold all of our partners. We have a saying in Pangea, if they win, we win. And that’s through to marketing to meetings. We literally hold their hand through the whole process and help them win any business we can.

Bernie McPhillips
Spot on David, thank you. We talk about being dedicated in three ways. You’re right, we’re dedicated to our partners, and then dedicated to this form of technology. We don’t sell fixed line, hosted mobile any other form of telecoms. It’s all about intelligent mobile data for us, and all about our partners. With that in mind, you know, if you are a partner already, then I would urge you to get in touch with your partner account manager and speak about our case studies in more detail, we can absolutely help you to find, qualify, and win opportunities, just like the ones we talk about on these podcasts. And if you’re not a partner than David, what should they do?

David Mitchell
Please get in touch and we will help you and if you’ve got any opportunities out there, however big or small, if you’re new to IoT, again, it’s a great opportunity to look at it and we’re more than happy to help new and existing partners.

Bernie McPhillips
Absolutely. That’s right David, just please get in touch one way or another, through our website, call our 0800 number, contact your account manager if you’re already a partner. Hit up me, hit up David, anyone in the business, and we will be delighted to help. Please subscribe to this podcast, subscribe to our newsletter, the link to that is on our website as well. And yeah other than that just thank you for listening and a huge thank you to David what a debut. Trying to keep the football flavour going. Absolutely great debut from our star striker David back of the net. Would you do another podcast in the future?

David Mitchell
If the money’s right, Bernie Yeah, if the money’s right. No, thank you, man. I really really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Bernie McPhillips
Super. Thanks, David it’s been a delight to have you and thank you very much again to all of our listeners. Bye now.