What does it take to be a member of the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team? How does it feel to step out in front of the cheering home crowd in Auckland’s Eden Park and perform the haka? How do you prepare for a game at this level? How do you deal with the pressure as you stand ready to deliver a game-changing penalty kick?
The new All Blacks Experience, arguably the world’s most immersive sporting visitor experience, allows each and every follower of the game to answer these questions for themselves. Conceived by Ngai Tahu Tourism and New Zealand Rugby and overall concept designed by Workshop E, it offers a guided, visceral, and interactive journey through the New Zealand rugby story, showcasing the All Blacks, the Black Ferns, and the Maori All Blacks. The technical components of the Experience were implemented by Wellington-based Toulouse—an AV, lighting and technology consultancy focused on museum exhibitions and themed environments—and powered by BrightSign players supplied by Midwich Australia.
The All Blacks Experience sits across one floor of approximately 1,800 square meters, adjacent to a number of high-end hotels in Auckland’s popular Sky City district. It comprises ten ‘zones,’ each with a unique set of hardware supporting the storytelling, drawing the visitor into the experience of being part of one of the most successful sports organizations in the world. The zones immerse visitors in the history, culture, and the people, as told by past and present legends of the game. Visitors get the chance to test out their rugby abilities, matching their kicking, catching, line out, and accuracy skills against New Zealand’s best players in the “hands on” interactive zone. Through the use of innovation and technology, they receive insights and direction from coaches and players to understand what it’s like to perform under pressure on a high-performance team. Finally, they are offered the chance to be a part of the iconic haka, through a four-meter-high screen experience that draws them into the center of the jaw-dropping, knee-trembling event.
One element that made this project exceptionally demanding was the anticipated level of use. Visitors are guided around the Experience by a well-trained, enthusiastic, and highly knowledgeable host. Tours depart every fifteen minutes, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. The hardware is used intensively, delivering a wide range of content, synchronization between edge-blended screens, and multi-channel audio playback—to small intimate screens, large interactive touch screens, and huge projection screens with equal quality and reliability.
The unique needs of each zone required individualized solutions that had to be carefully worked through. For example, the Shaping Zone offers interactive games that demonstrate the psychology and emotional development stages of All Blacks training—presented on 26 individual touch screens that allow each participant to pitch their skills against the opposing team. At the other end of the scale, the Haka Zone presents a stadium pre-match on a four-meter-tall and 17-meter-long blended projection screen, with sound belting out through 14,400 watts of amplification when the haka is performed. The Step-Up Zone presents a completely different challenge to both the visitor and the Toulouse AV designers. Here a series of playing cages with four-meter-tall portrait projection screens are the game surface of choice as visitors compare their skills against the All Blacks themselves when they kick, pass and throw a rugby ball.
Simpson, Managing Director of Toulouse, selected BrightSign players due to a long history with the product. “It is robust, flexible, responsive, and easily adaptable to our needs. Given that we were installing during the pandemic, making supply lines challenging, we needed a product that could guarantee availability and ease-of-use and reliability for the client. Delivery was within the installation timeline, and the players worked across the range of platforms – from intimate to large-format projection.”
The All Blacks Experience is powered by 36 BrightSign HD224 players and thirty HD1024 players supplied by Midwich. Screens vary in size from 32-inch Signage Screens to a 13-meter-wide edge-blended, curved, 3x projector screen.
“In addition, these players can perform many of the functions of a control system,” Simpson adds. Doors and lighting are controlled by the guides using handheld remotes interfaced to the BrightSign players. The players coordinate the tours, forming the front end of a sequential queuing system warning guides if they are in danger of catching up with or conflicting with the experience of another tour. They also collect data from the RFID scanners that visitors use to swipe into games. The BrightSign players transmit data from the visitor’s wristband to the ticketing server that stores the details and returns a personalized greeting or other appropriate message to the screen.
“The All Blacks Experience needs to be exactly the same for the millionth visitor as it was for the first visitor,” Simpson explains. “Content is delivered over a ring-fenced Gigabit network. This is to avoid any unintentional changes or updates without care and consideration. As control over new content is critical to maintaining quality, we decided to not utilize an automated content management system. This gives us complete confidence that the Experience will power up every morning without fail, no screens of death, no updates, no issues.”
Simpson is justly proud that the Toulouse team delivered such a technically complex and demanding project on time and on budget, working largely in lockdown. “Even though we opened during a global pandemic, the reaction we saw from visitors was everything we hoped for and more,” said Phil McGowan, General Manager of the All Blacks Experience. “Rugby fans emerge very emotional. The All Blacks Experience has performed flawlessly since opening. Blank screens or screens displaying incomplete content would destroy the magic and the atmosphere we have worked so hard to create.”
