Zeetta: The networking specialists for stadiums

Liam Watson

As Australia and the rest of the world are hoping to allow more fans to regularly games in the future, network partners like Zeetta can shoulder the load that comes with managing 5G/WiFi connections.

Zeetta Networks offer high-quality software so that organisations can monitor, control and operate their networks in a flexible and cost-effective manner. In essence, this optimises their communication potential to fans (the customer), delivering a better experience for all.

Zeetta are a leading provider of network solutions, capable of deploying the right technology for any stadiums looking to harness the potential of mobile usage in particular, where communications from a club can be sent direct to a person’s smartphone.

Their products centre around three key pillars:

Visualise: Paints the picture of a network, giving a better indication of the condition of the network with Zeetta’s multi-vendor, multi-technology, multi-site monitoring.

Optimise: Simplifies network operations, eliminates human error and reduces time spend to create and manage network services by up to 90%, ensuring that data is not only quick but accurate.

Automate: Gives businesses the power to make network configurations in a timely manner, with fast on-demand responses able to make sure that all objectives are met.

Backed by a “service-centric” network design approach, Zeetta is versatile in their capabilities – orchestrating their service across mixed LAN, Wireless LAN and cellular LTE/5G technologies with proven distribution in stadia, multi-purpose venues, events, ports and factories.

One of the highlights among Zeetta’s case studies is the creation of a programmable stadium. Ashton Gate Stadium (AGS) – home to Bristol City FC and Bristol Bears RFC.

Regarded as the largest stadium in South-West England with a capacity of 27,000, AGS features state-of-the-art conference facilities and is a major exhibition and hospitality venue for the area.

The stadium offers more than just hosting football matches during England’s winter months, with AGS regularly holding summer concerts for major artists which allows several hundreds of thousands more fans to attend, boosting the stadium capacity to more than 34,000.

For a 24/7 multi-purpose venue that needs to cater for a variety of people, it comes with a complex network and service environment supporting sports, hospitality, conferences and large-scale events.

Upon linking up with AGS, Zeetta identified that it is a complex enterprise environment. The stadium’s public Wi-Fi network on its own is a multi-vendor network with more than 300 network elements and is designed to support crowds of high densities.

There have been a couple of access points added from two vendors located in different areas. A high-density Wi-Fi installation from Ruckus is found in the bowl, while Edgecore access points have been installed in hospitality areas and the concourse. By placing these vendors in specific areas that are easily identified, this creates a better efficiency and up to a 30% reduction in CAPEX (the costs associated with setting these connections up).

With the ability of the network to support a range of services, it can extend to electronic point-of-sale (ePOS) terminals in bars and concessions to CCTV surveillance to electronic turnstiles and IPTV distribution systems.

As mentioned before, the quantity of events on a yearly basis at AGS means that a strong and stable network like Zeetta can match the demands that come with a large number of users.

In 2018, Zeetta launched their NetOS® technology to AGS. NetOS is a software defined networking (SDN) orchestrator, based on the industry-standard OpenDaylight controller based on the Linux Foundation®. By using the SDN technology, IT teams have ultimate control of their network operations and lets them concentrate on constructing services according to what the user wants, rather than how the network presents its capabilities.

For a complex network infrastructure that AGS contains, Zeetta proved that in a large-scale demonstration of the capability and scalability of their technology, they could manage this network in a vendor-agnostic way that reduces CAPEX and OPEX, to provide a single-pane-of-glass visibility and control. Found within AGS’ network is the two populations of Wi-Fi systems, CCTV, IPTV displays and other IoT devices and sub-systems.

Zeetta’s execution of its NetOS technology to AGS delivered an intelligent network automation for a complex enterprise network to support multiple mission-critical and business-critical services running in areas of high crowd density and the applicable demand for digital connectivity, dependant on the number of visitors.

“Sports stadia across the globe struggle with connectivity and real-time evaluation of data. I believe we are just scratching the surface of what this NetOS platform can deliver,” AGS chairman Martin Griffiths said.

For more information on Zeetta’s products, technologies, solutions and case studies, you can find it here.

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Football Victoria and VicHealth partner on anti-racism program as community sport data reveals systemic problem

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Football Victoria has partnered with the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation to roll out the Set The Standard initiative across the state’s football clubs, in a collaboration that signals a significant shift in how Australia’s most popular club-based sport is approaching racism and cultural exclusion at the grassroots level.

The partnership brings together the state’s peak football governing body and its primary health promotion agency around a shared finding that can no longer be treated as incidental. According to the 2025 report Enhancing the Capacity of Victorian Community Sport to Tackle Racism, 56 per cent of surveyed participants had experienced or witnessed racism in community sport. In a state where football draws participants from some of the most culturally diverse communities in the country, that figure represents a systemic failure the sport can no longer address through conduct policies alone.

Clubs that subscribe to the Set The Standard newsletter will be entered into a draw to win one of three $1,000 vouchers, available for equipment, facility improvements, events or other community initiatives. The incentive is designed to drive early engagement with a program whose ambitions extend well beyond a newsletter subscription.

What the Partnership Signals

Racism in sport has historically been treated as a conduct and governance issue, managed through complaints mechanisms that require incidents to be formally reported and tend to significantly undercount the actual prevalence of harm. VicHealth’s framing of racism as a public health problem repositions the entire conversation.

Experiences of racism are associated with measurable negative health outcomes including anxiety, depression and social withdrawal. When community sport, which governments and health agencies actively promote as a vehicle for physical and mental wellbeing, becomes a source of those same harms, the public health cost is direct and quantifiable.

Resources, not Rhetoric

For Football Victoria, the partnership brings something the governing body cannot provide on its own. VicHealth’s credibility, resources and public health framework give the initiative a foundation that a sporting organisation working alone would struggle to establish. Set The Standard offers clubs practical tools and guidance built around progress rather than perfection, which reflects a realistic understanding of how cultural change works inside volunteer-run community organisations.

The $1,000 vouchers are not a side note. Most community clubs operate on tight margins, depend on volunteer administrators and are already stretched managing growing participation demands. Finding room to invest in cultural development programs on top of everything else is difficult. Providing tangible resources directly addresses that constraint at the point where clubs are most likely to disengage.

The program also arrives at a consequential moment. Football in Victoria is absorbing significant participation growth following the AFC Women’s Asian Cup and sustained increases in junior registrations, bringing new communities into the game in large numbers. The 2025 data suggests the environments those communities are entering are not consistently safe or welcoming. Participation growth and cultural safety work need to move together. A sport that grows larger without becoming more inclusive has not actually improved the experience of the people playing it.

The Man Who Built a Women’s Football Program from Nothing is now an Award-Winning Gender Equity Leader

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Image Credit: Football Victoria

Eight years ago, Spring Hills Football Club did not have a girls’ team. Today it has one of the most recognised women’s programs in Melbourne’s west, a senior NPLW side, and a head coach who has just been named Gender Equity Leader of the Year at the Melton City Council Volunteer Achievement Awards.

Tom Markovski, Spring Hills’ NPLW Head Coach, received the award at a ceremony coinciding with National Volunteer Week, recognised for his community leadership, promotion of gender equality and commitment to advancing the status of women and people of all genders in sport. The recognition comes from outside the football community entirely, awarded by a local council celebrating volunteers across every sector of civic life in one of Melbourne’s fastest-growing regions.

Building from scratch

When Markovski arrived at Spring Hills, women’s football at the club did not exist. His first act was to champion the establishment of the club’s first all-girls team, a process that required persuading a club culture built around men’s football that the investment was worth making.

Women’s football in community clubs has historically struggled to access the same facilities, scheduling priority, coaching resources and institutional support as the men’s game. Clubs have been slow to invest in programs whose return is less immediately visible than a senior men’s premiership, and in a growing outer-suburban community like Melton, where volunteer capacity is finite and demand across every program is high, the case for building something new always has to compete with the urgency of maintaining what already exists.

Markovski made the case anyway, and kept making it across eight years of coaching senior and junior NPL teams while simultaneously building the structural foundations of a women’s program designed to outlast any individual’s involvement. The club’s first all-girls team became multiple junior girls teams. Those junior teams created the pipeline for a senior women’s side. The senior women’s side created visible pathways for younger players to see where the game could take them within their own club.

The outcome is a program that Spring Hills now holds up as central to its identity rather than supplementary to it. The club has become a leader in female participation in Melbourne’s west, and recently made history within the NPLW Victoria structure by fielding junior teams coached entirely by female coaches, a milestone that reflects the depth of the program Markovski helped build.

What the Award Recognises

The Melton City Council’s decision to name Markovski its Gender Equity Leader of the Year places his work in a frame that extends beyond football. Melton is one of the fastest-growing local government areas in Australia, a diverse and rapidly expanding community where the institutions that bring people together, like schools, councils, sporting clubs, carry an outsized responsibility for social cohesion.

Mayor Cr. Lara Carli, speaking at the awards ceremony, reflected on the role volunteers play in communities like Melton’s. “Volunteering creates friendships, strengthens communities and builds a sense of belonging,” she said. “It helps people feel connected, supported and valued, and those things are more important than ever in a growing and diverse community like ours.”

For the girls now playing football at Spring Hills who were not playing anywhere eight years ago, Markovski’s contribution is not abstract. It is the specific and concrete fact of having somewhere to play, someone to coach them, and a pathway that leads somewhere.

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