After the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup, the Rugby World Cup is the largest sporting tournament in the world, an event of growing complexity every four years.

The logistics for staging Rugby World Cup go far beyond the stadiums, with a massive accreditation program used to manage VIPs, teams, media, officials, volunteers and all the salaried support staff to run the events.

Amlink Technologies has developed the world’s most sophisticated accreditation module which works online to ensure only approved people were in any particular spot during RWC 2007 in France, Scotland and Wales.

“Since the Rugby World Cup in 2003, Amlink Technologies has worked in partnership with the International Rugby Board (IRB) to develop our software to evolve and meet the changing requirements,” says Trevor Gardiner, CEO of Amlink Technologies.

Some 40,000 records were processed through these accreditation portals. The outcome of the accreditation process was to generate passes from Amlink’s eventsPro, giving clear visual permissions to approved areas within the venues and access to functions.

Similar treatment was provided for the volunteers, who are the backbone of the tournament on match days. With a significant increase in volunteers in 2007, a portal was developed for volunteers to submit their applications on line.

Volunteers could also log back in to update their details and see if their requested position had been approved or not.

The volunteer online portal was also used to manage all communications with the 7,000+ personnel. This included individual position and venue allocation at each of the stadiums, shift scheduling, meal and transport ticketing, and, training requirements for the role,” Mr Gardiner said. “The logistics of managing the volunteer community was significantly streamlined by the portal.”

Media ticketing was streamlined. The media access to venues provided significant challenges towards the end of tournament when it wouldn’t be known until a few days out of the match which teams would be meeting one another.

Media from a team country were obviously given priority. The Media Ticketing was also undertaken via a portal. The media were able to submit an online application where they could request the matches they wanted to attend.

The Media Ticketing process included a sophisticated ranking and priority point-based matrix which included whether the media was from a team country or not.

From the points automatically applied to each media application, Amlink’s newly developed Visual Allocation tool was able to allocate the seating, down to the actual seat in each stadium.

The system also enabled wait-listed media to be given access, as late as 30 minutes before a game started, if preallocated seats were not required.

“While the system focused on media ticketing, volunteer management, venue accreditation and transportation logistics, with no paper application forms required, the sheer volume of people that accessed the system via the internet portals made this a milestone success for Amlink Technologies,” Mr Gardiner said.

Amlink and the IRB started work in March 2006 and the roll out of the software was used at the Top 14 competition played throughout France (Aug 06 – June 07), the 6 Nations tournament (Feb-March 07), the Test Match at Marseille (October 2006) and the Rugby World Cup (September to October 07).

Amlink Technologies has been involved since the Australian 2003 Rugby World Cup and will continue to partner the IRB through to the New Zealand Rugby World Cup in 2011.