The Cotai strip in Macau was in rapid development when Manchester United teamed up with the Venetian to open the first interactive football experience in the Asia region. In a joint venture with Nike, one of the world’s most popular football clubs committed to opening an 1100 m2 visitor experience on the 2nd floor above the sports destination retail shop. Overall architectural design was done by HEAD Architecture and the visitor experience design was done by MET Studio.
As Project Director for Hypsos (Hong Kong), Tim Large was responsible for the overall coordination of the exhibition fit out, casework and display cases, AV and multimedia production, interactive development and installation, AV hardware supply, installation and programming, models, graphics and lighting. The international team included W. Hing Construction, Centre Screen, Kiss the Frog, Media Go, Standard (Chan’s), Silver Hill Arts, and RJ Models.
In addition to artefacts provided by the club, the heart of the experience were the visitor training pods. Visitors could test their skills Including dribbling, shooting and goaltending. Each of the six training pods allowed visitors to earn a score that was stored in a database. The cumulative results were shown on a leaderboard and were accessible through a dedicated website. A Pepper’s Ghost appearance by Sir Alex Ferguson surprised many as they explored the touchscreen kit bags in the Old Trafford locker room.