Arsenal's technologically advanced new Emirates Stadium shows the way for those redeveloping Lansdowne Road, writes Eamon McGrane

Where do you build a brand new state of the art football stadium? On a rubbish dump in the middle of an industrial park, that's where.

Tottenham Hotspur fans could have been forgiven for raising a smile when they heard their arch-rivals Arsenal were about to move location to a dump. But as Tottenham now struggles to find a place to relocate to itself, Arsenal has recently opened the gates to the Emirates Stadium, one of the most impressive and technologically advanced football grounds in the UK and, the club claims, the world.

The design team for the Emirates Stadium was made up of architects HOK Sport, who also designed the Telstra Stadium in Australia, the new Wembley Stadium, and Benfica's Estádio da Luz stadium, and engineering firm Buro Happold, the engineers for the Millennium Dome and the proposed redevelopment at Lansdowne Road.

The transformation from Arsenal's old ground at Highbury to its new technologically-fuelled 60,000 seated stadium at Ashburton Grove has been akin to the transformation on the pitch. Gone is the boring, boring Arsenal of old, replaced with a continental style of play interlaced with a lot of panache and "va va voom" as a certain Frenchman might say.

One of the more impressive elements of the Emirates Stadium and indeed the whole transformation from the infrastructure at Highbury has been the IT systems that the football club has put in place.

To the majority of the fans arriving at the stadium, most of the technology will be invisible but, as they pass through the electronic turnstiles, buy merchandising, food and drink, IT will nonetheless be controlling those kind of activities in one way or another.

"At Highbury, on match day, the amount of IT used was minimal," said Paul Farmer, head of IT for Arsenal. "For example, we had the old turnstiles and we didn't have any networked screens.

"There are 100 turnstiles operated by the network at Emirates, in addition to 440 screens and 80 Wi-Fi points throughout the stadium.

"Retail applications for our merchandising shop and food outlets are also controlled by the network through the electronic point of sale system installed there.

"So it's been a quantum leap: we now have so much reliant on the network and on the applications and that's been part of the transformation, having enabling technologies to ensure that you can run the business effectively. So it's absolutely crucial.

"The need and involvement for IT at Highbury wasn't necessary but it is here. If it shuts down, we have major problems," said Mr Farmer.

Technology now plays a huge part in how one of the richest clubs in Europe is run as a business and how it reaches out to its supporters.

Clubs such as Arsenal only have about 30 times in a season to hit its fanbase through home games in the league and, if it gets a good run, in cups and European competitions.

Football has become more business-focused than ever and the stadium relies heavily on technology for this, so it is important for the IT department to have full visibility of what's going on and to identify potential issues that could lead to any revenue loss such as the merchandising or turnstile systems not working.

This is where CA's monitoring software comes in, as it patrols the network, making sure everything is ticking over.

"Because the IT is more complex and sophisticated, we wanted a system to help us monitor and manage the new infrastructure, so we went with CA's Unicentre Network Management software. From that, we got transparency of the network and something that would fit into our systems and applications.

"We also had a need for real-time monitoring for proactive reporting on any problems the network might have," said Mr Farmer.

Mark Bridger, Ireland and UK country manager for CA, said its involvement was all about improving the service that IT delivers to the club. "On a match day, it's fundamental to the smooth running of 60,000 people, television systems, PCs, and so on. IT is playing a huge part in managing the brand of Arsenal FC."

Some of the club's future tech plans involve a cashless environment at the ground where season ticket holders could pay for their merchandise, food and drink and so on with the club card used at the turnstiles.

Clearly, this is the next wave in design for future stadiums as many sports grounds around the world start to creak, groan and show their age - and often, it's not practical to build on or up.

With its attendant technology, Emirates is the sort of stadium that you can expect to see dotted throughout the world over the next few years.

So does Mr Farmer have any advice for the Lansdowne Road project? "This is the future and it has been built from the ground up.

"You need to get everything right the first time such as IT cabling infrastructure and have resilience built into everything - that's something you need to consider from day one when building a stadium."