Live readiness board for the matchday control room
Problem
Ahead of kickoff, the event director needs one answer: is the venue ready. Today that answer comes from working the radio channel round each department in turn, security, turnstiles, medical, broadcast, catering, and writing what each one says onto the run sheet or a whiteboard behind the control desk. A department that has gone quiet might mean the issue is resolved, or might mean nobody has checked. When a turnstile fault or a delayed delivery surfaces late, it surfaces because someone happened to ask, not because a threshold was crossed. After the match the whiteboard is wiped, so there is no record of what was actually late, only what eventually got sorted.
Product idea
A single screen for the control room showing each department's status against the run sheet, submitted by the department head from a phone rather than relayed over radio: ready, in progress, or blocked, with a short note. Each item carries a deadline relative to kickoff, for example a team sheet submission cut-off or a safety certificate condition, and the board turns amber and then red as that deadline approaches without sign-off. A red item pages a named person, usually the duty manager or event director, rather than sitting on a list nobody is watching. Every status change is timestamped, so the board doubles as the record the run sheet used to be, and it can be reviewed after the match rather than discarded with the whiteboard.
Who it is for
Event directors and control room supervisors who need one view of venue status, matchday operations managers who chase department heads, and duty managers who receive the escalation when a deadline is about to be missed.
Possible first version
A mobile web form for each department head to set status against a fixed run sheet, and a single dashboard view for the control room showing all items with a countdown to kickoff. Escalation rules are configurable per item type, and a breached deadline sends an SMS or push alert to a named person. Version one holds its own run sheet templates rather than pulling from a competition management platform, and it does not connect to access control or turnstile systems: status for those areas is entered by hand, the same as everything else.
- Build classification
- Workflow application
- Rough effort
- 4-6 week first release
- Roles involved
- Event director, Control room supervisor, Matchday operations manager, Duty manager
- Relevant to
- Professional club, Venue & stadium operator, League office, Women's league
- Systems in play
- Radio and communications systems, Run sheets and checklists, Competition management platforms, Access control and turnstile systems
- Product framing
- Monitor
Questions we get asked
Our teams already call it in over the radio. Why would they also update a phone?
The radio stays; it is still the fastest way to coordinate something that is happening right now. The board is for state, not conversation: what a department's status is at this moment, so the control room does not have to interrupt six people in turn to find out. If setting a status takes longer than saying it over the radio, department heads will stop doing it, which is a fair test of whether the board earns its place.
What happens if a department head loses signal mid-event, or the board itself goes down at kickoff?
Status entries queue on the device and sync once signal returns, the same way the run sheet used to survive a dead radio, on paper if needed. If the board itself is unreachable during a live incident, the control room falls back to the radio and the whiteboard, exactly as it does today; this tool is meant to reduce how often that fallback is needed, not to become a single point of failure the venue depends on to function.
Who is actually responsible for keeping the run sheet templates and escalation rules current once this exists?
Usually the matchday operations manager owns the templates, deciding which items appear and what counts as a breach, and the event director owns who receives escalations. That is an ongoing job, not a one-off setup: a run sheet that does not reflect this week's fixture, kick-off time or safety certificate conditions will generate either false alarms or silence at the point it matters most, so somebody has to update it before every matchday.
What does this need from us on day one, and what does it not do?
It needs a run sheet: the list of checks your venue already works through before kickoff, with rough timings against the clock. It does not decide whether the venue is safe to open. That judgement stays with the people who currently make it; the board only makes clear which checks are outstanding and for how long, so the decision is made with better information rather than being made by the tool.
Is this your workflow?
Tell us one sports workflow that still runs on paper, spreadsheets, WhatsApp or an outdated system. We will map it and show you what a simpler product looks like.
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