Touchline Activations in Football
Observers of the beautiful game may have noticed the growing trend among clubs to create valuable new advertising inventory from their touchline run-off areas. GroundWOW’s autonomous robotic technology enables this, in fact: We Make Printing On Ground As Easy As Printing On Paper™.
How it works
It’s super simple…our intuitive technology can be used and operated by anyone. With a short training course, users are able to take full control of activations on behalf of your club’s brand partners. If that’s not for you, we also operate GroundWOW Managed Services, a full turnkey operation where we deploy a team of GroundWOW experts to run the technology and manage print installation from start to finish. Either way, jobs are scheduled into our print management and planning software (Campus Planner) with a designated location, print size, colour detail and requisite resolution. Logos are normally put in place a couple of days before kick-off and the technology is responsive enough to accommodate last minute amends right up until the moment that the print begins.
How the paint dries
In terms of actual print, GroundWOW technology has been designed to significantly reduce the level of paint deposition. There are many beneficial outcomes from this including on real turf, where paint needs to dry quickly and not flood the print area (which can impact the plant’s natural growth cycle and behaviour). Artificial turf presents greater freedom including when it comes to drying and while using less paint already helps to accelerate drying times, we also use custom drying lamps to make sure everything is perfect before the game. Once dry, our scientifically engineered paints do not pick up and transfer from their positions as a result of footfall, media equipment or maintenance traffic in busy locations.
Paint & logo removal
Using up to 90% less paint than conventional methods offers another major advantage when it comes to removal. On artificial turf surfaces, if it is a part of the deal, GroundWOW’s activation team will be on site to remove the prints after the game and hand back a clean stadium. This is achieved using our turf safe surfactant to break down the paint’s structure before the area is hosed with water and passed over with mechanical brushes. Any wash-off is removed and any surface infill is brushed back into the surface if required. The process is easily adopted by a club’s own grounds or maintenance team and as with application, full training is provided. On natural grass, our advocated method is referred to internally as “grow and mow”. As our print is applied to only the top of the blades of grass, the rate of growth in most top level settings is such that the print can be cut out after only a few days. Light brushing and water can also be applied if a quicker removal is required.
Did you know?
GroundWOW’s custom paints are solvent free and are 100% plant and animal safe. Our paint is refined and adapted to the specific surface type and formulated for purpose. This includes more durable variants for longer lasting results or adapted if a print is applied for aesthetic only and where rapid removal might be required post-event. Our system can print up to six colours at any one time, and paint is custom blended in-house for perfect colour matching.