IKONIX Deploys Brompton Technology at Broncos Season Launch

The Brisbane Broncos Rugby League Football Club Ltd., commonly referred to as the Broncos, are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the city of Brisbane, QLD. The Broncos season launch event is a mainstay of the team’s foundation for the year, giving the club an opportunity to announce new players in addition to a media and fans address by the coach. For this year’s season launch, the club worked with their long-time event technology service provider, IKONIX, to deliver an intimate event bringing the team and fans safely together all under one roof at one of Australia’s most beautiful performance venues.

“The Brisbane Broncos launch event reinforces the club’s ethos and the team’s plans for the new season, so it’s an important date in everybody’s calendar,” says Zachary Burton, Director at IKONIX. “Our team has been working with the club for a number of years, supporting with productions of different scales of highly polished events. This year’s was no exception.”

The event was held at the Brisbane’s best-loved music venue, The Tivoli Theatre, nicknamed The Tiv. “With its stunning art deco features and the old-world charm, The Tiv offered the perfect spot for an intimate event for 350 people, which wouldn’t be possible in a larger venue due to Covid rules constantly changing,” explains Burton.

The situation in Australia was still very much restricted at the time of the Broncos season launch event in March this year, with many events being delivered virtually. For the IKONIX team, this was the perfect opportunity to build trust with the audience and work with a new social-distancing system. As part of the stage design, the team opted for a ‘forest’ of LED strips allowing them to build sections individually and safely. “We used 60 1.2m ROE LED Strips, all powered by Brompton processing,” says Burton.

Having already used Brompton’s Tessera LED processors on many live shows and events, IKONIX trust the product to deliver. “We have found Tessera processors very capable at getting quick results with LED strips, the 360-degree rotation and mapping tools making it easy to build the set. Additionally, the colour correction that Tessera software offers enabled us to carefully balance and match all the colours,” continues Burton.

The video content showed at the event was produced in-house by IKONIX, which, coupled with the physical installation of the LED Strips, created depth and tunnel-like effect for the players entering the stage from its rear centre side. The content played on the LED Strips matched the content on the flanking projection screens, offering the audience a spectacular visual show.

The event was a success with a lot of positive feedback received from the attendees as well as the client and the venue teams, who were all delighted that the event was executed safely after almost a year’s hiatus.

“Our team really enjoyed this experience. Being able to work closely with our long-term client at such a great venue, and to execute a solution that looked good and met the public health and safety requirements was just fantastic. We’re still buzzing with excitement!” exclaims Burton.

After a full year of waiting and adapting to the new ‘normal’, the season launch was a perfect opportunity for IKONIX to build confidence and get back to a ‘gig normal’ working environment the team had been yearning for. “We cannot wait until live shows return once again. With the event’s timeframe being very tight, we wouldn’t have been able to turn it around without Tessera’s powerful feature set. It is a trusted piece of software for IKONIX that we know we can rely on every time,” Burton concludes.