HPE 704644-B21 Product Data Sheet

Objective

Upgrade entire network to meet
requirements of Premier League

Approach

Developed plans with long-term
IT partner, Medhurst Communications

Case Study

AFC Bournemouth strengthens
long-term fortunes with
Premier League promotion

HPE switches underpin vital network
infrastructure upgrade

IT Matters

• Delivers a fully verified and tested
IT infrastructure, capable of supporting
long-term development

• Creates a robust network, simplifying
management and maintenance for
one-man, in-house IT department

Business Matters

• Meets stipulated requirements of
Premier League

• Establishes the club as a tier one
sporting venue, with world-class
media and IT facilities

AFC Bournemouth is
a footballing fairytale.
After nearly going out of
business less than 10 years
ago, the club has risen to
the Premier League, the
pinnacle of English football.
But admittance to the big
leagues means an upgrade
of the club’s infrastructure.
HPE technology underpins
the revamp of the club’s
IT network.

Challenge

A rapid rise

Football is full of underdog stories. AFC
Bournemouth might be one of the best.

On the first day of the 2009-10 football
season, 2,998 fans turned up to watch Bury
play Bournemouth in the fourth tier of
English football. Bournemouth had narrowly
avoided relegation from the League the
previous year and had nearly gone out of
business. Little was expected of the team
this term.

The 3-0 win at Bury heralded an upturn in
Bournemouth’s fortunes. The club went on
to secure promotion to tier three. It followed
this with promotion to tier two in 2013, and
in April 2015, for the first time in the club’s
history, won promotion to the Premier
League – the pinnacle of English football,
and the world’s richest football league.

Case study

AFC Bournemouth

“The Medhurst proposal centred on Hewlett Packard Enterprise. I had no

issue with that. We’ve been using more and more HPE technology and that
created a level of confidence. HPE was the right choice; with the warranty
and support it was the best, fully-backed solution.”

– Richard Poole, IT manager, AFC Bournemouth

Industry

Sport

Page 2

The club did this with the same manager
and many of the same players. Behind the
scenes, the IT infrastructure had changed
little in five years.

Big money, bigger expectations

The Premier League sold its latest round
of domestic broadcast rights, 2016-19,
for £5.136 billion, a 71 per cent jump on
the previous deal. It is estimated
overseas TV rights will bring in a further
£1 billion per year.

In return, the broadcasters expect a certain
standard of ‘product’. Every Premier League
club is required to provide world class
infrastructure, from the quality of pitches,
to floodlights, to catering. It all adds to the
Premier League experience.

The IT infrastructure is no dierent. Clubs
must host the world’s print and broadcast
media on every match day. They must
provide interview areas, conference rooms
and media zones, all with the appropriate
level of connectivity.

The Premier League has a lengthy list of
technical requirements, from the number
of concurrent users to data points to
broadcast cabling standards. From 2016,
each of the 20 Premier League clubs will be
guaranteed at least £80 million per season,
though the payments are conditional on
all requirements being met. For newly
promoted clubs, the challenge was twofold:
upgrade their infrastructure immediately,
and ensure they avoided relegation.

“Perhaps we didn’t want to tempt fate but we
never started planning for life in the Premier
League until we knew for certain we’d
been promoted,” says Richard Poole, AFC
Bournemouth’s IT manager. “That left us 13
weeks to plan and implement the upgrade.
I can’t tell you how crazy this summer was.”

Solution

Upgrading the network

The club had worked with Medhurst
Communications, a local technology support
service specialist, for a number of years.

“We’ve worked with them on small jobs and
ad hoc support, but nothing on the same
level of resource as this,” says Poole. “That
said, we’d always used them as a sounding
board, imagining what’s possible, if and
when we’d need it.”