Every Supplier has to play for the same team

At a big sporting event, the technology that makes it run is never built by one company. There are dozens that provide services to the event. is a supplier for the Wi-Fi, another for scoring, another for broadcast, another for ticketing, another for the tills, another for the radios, another for the door access. Dozens of them, all landing on the same site, on the same network, in the same few days. Each one arrives convinced their way is the right way.

That is where the trouble usually starts.

The problem is rarely the product

When I built the technology operation for LIV Golf events around the world, and during my time delivering tech for the Ryder Cup with the European Tour, the hardest part was almost never choosing the best individual system. Most suppliers are good at the thing they do. The scoring people know scoring. The broadcast people know broadcast.

The difficulty is that each one tends to design as though it is the only system in the building. They configure the network the way they like it. They assume a particular IP range is free. They expect to own the connectivity, the switches, the priority. Put six of those suppliers in one venue and their assumptions collide — two systems fighting over the same addresses, one supplier’s “standard setup” knocking another offline, and nobody accountable for the seams between them.

When it breaks at three o’clock on the day of play, it does not break neatly inside one supplier’s box. It breaks in the gaps between them. And the gaps are where no single supplier feels responsible.

Flexibility and communication beat brilliance

The events that ran smoothly were not the ones with the cleverest individual kit. They were the ones where every supplier understood they were joining an environment that already existed, rather than imposing a fresh one of their own. Where someone held the whole picture and made the suppliers talk to each other before anything was plugged in.

It comes down to two things, and neither is especially technical. Flexibility — a willingness to adapt your configuration to fit what is already embedded rather than insisting everyone else moves around you. And communication — actually telling the other suppliers what you are doing, and asking what they have done, before you do it. A supplier who walks in asking “what is already here and how do I fit into it?” is worth more than one with a slightly better product who assumes the venue is a blank sheet.

The same problem, in slow motion

This is not just a big-event problem. It is exactly what happens at a golf club, a rugby club, or any sports venue — only stretched out over years instead of days.

The Wi-Fi was installed by one company in 2019. The tills came from a hospitality supplier who set up their own little network in the bar. The phones were done by someone else again. The door access was a separate job entirely. The website and bookings sit with a fourth supplier. Each was embedded at a different time, by a different contractor, none of them aware of — or interested in — the others. I even saw a supplier run their own Wi-Fi, not because they needed it, but because the router they brought in to work with their system had it on by default.

It works, until it doesn’t. And when the card machine goes down on a busy Saturday, or the gate system stops talking to the booking software, it lands on the general manager or the club secretary to untangle which supplier owns the problem. Usually none of them will admit it does.

It is the same shape across every sport. A golf club, a rugby club, a cricket club, a leisure centre — different game, identical issue behind the scenes. I have seen this play out at the very top of professional sport, in football and cricket as well as golf, and the underlying pattern is the same all the way down to a single-site club.

What good actually looks like

The fix is not another supplier. It is having one person who holds the whole picture — who understands the environment as a system rather than a collection of unrelated installations, and who makes the suppliers coordinate instead of compete. Someone whose job is the seams, not just the boxes.

I spent years making large numbers of suppliers coexist under real pressure. The same discipline scales down neatly to a club running on a handful of suppliers who have never spoken to one another.

If your club is juggling several suppliers who do not talk to each other — and most are — I am happy to take a look at how it all fits together and where the pressure points are. No pitch, just a useful, senior perspective on your setup.

Pat Colombo runs Net Tech IT, providing managed IT support to sports clubs, hospitality, and SMBs across the South. Let’s chat.

Posted On: 24 June 2026