Forsyth Barr Stadium: Building a website worthy of the classic Dunedin venue

Voyage built a shared platform that powers two brand-distinct sites, automates event management, and finally solves an integration everyone had written off. This project turns Forsyth Barr Stadium's outdated web presence into a live, self-updating product.

We successfully:

• Rebuilt the stadium's website on a shared Sanity CMS, letting DVML's small internal team manage two brand-consistent sites from one place, with zero duplicated effort
• Solved the Momentus integration - a two-way sync previously parked as too difficult, connecting event data, bookings, and inquiries directly to the website
• Automated event management with a cron sync running every three hours, so events appear, update, and expire automatically
• Built in manual override capability, so the team can force an urgent sync or enrich event listings whenever needed
• Used Claude Code to accelerate development, enabling our lead developer to focus on architecture and quality rather than writing every line from scratch
• Delivered working frontend demos every week, keeping DVML and design partner Walsh & Beck aligned and reducing late-stage rework

Forsyth Barr Stadium is Dunedin's flagship live event venue, home to prominent sporting events, major concerts, and large-scale community events. Its digital presence hadn't kept up. Built on the Silverstripe platform, the existing website was visually outdated and reaching end of life.

The initial website build was to be part of a larger project, with the new Stadium website to share a single CMS, a consistent brand, and a seamless integration with their existing event management platform, Momentus, and the next website in the series. Voyage was chosen as development partner alongside Walsh & Beck, who led design.

Voyage were tasked with building a shared Sanity CMS that powered two visually distinct but brand-consistent websites, so DVML’s small internal team could manage both from one place, without duplicating effort or having to maintain separate systems.

Another necessity and arguably the biggest technical challenge was the integration with Momentus, the event and venue management software. DVML runs all of its event data, bookings, memberships, ticket links and inquiries through Momentus, making it a core part of the company’s websites.

With a tight timeline, the team leaned into AI-assisted development using Claude Code to handle the heavy lifting of code generation. The lead developer was able to focus on reviewing, quality-checking, feature enhancements and maintaining the big picture across the full build.

The approach made a visible difference from week one. Rather than waiting for backend work to be completed before giving clients updates, the team was demoing working frontend builds every week, giving DVM and Walsh & Beck something tangible to react to, and catching design adjustments early.

"Every week I was able to demo something to the client - this is actual progress, this is what we've been working on. Even though it wasn't final, it was something real. That's a game changer." – Olivia Yee, Producer, Voyage

The developer's role shifted: rather than writing every line from scratch, the focus became architectural thinking, reviewing AI output, and keeping the overall picture intact.

"You let Claude do all the nitty gritty stuff. It takes away the manual brain load of writing code, so you can actually think about bigger and better things." – Sally Wright, Lead Developer, Voyage

The Momentus integration was the most technically demanding part of the project, and the one that had previously been parked as too hard. Voyage built a two-way connection: contact and inquiry forms push data directly into Momentus, while event data flows back into Sanity automatically.

A scheduled sync runs every three hours via a cron job, pulling current events into a structured Sanity field set (current, expired, cancelled). When an event expires or is cancelled in Momentus, it drops off the site. For new events the DVML team gets an email alert that a new event has been retrieved, which can then be edited before it’s published to the site.

We also built in manual override capability. If an urgent change is needed outside the sync window, the DVML team can trigger a sync themselves, or go in and add images and additional context to pre-populated event fields. It meant the DVML team kept the workflow they'd always used in Momentus - the website just became a live reflection of it.

Throughout the project, the DVML team were engaged, responsive, and trusting of Voyage's recommendations, even when scope had to be re-prioritised under time pressure. The relationship with Walsh & Beck has been equally strong, with Voyage already in design workshops for the second site in the project: Dunedin Venues.

The new Forsyth Barr Stadium website is now a place that immediately communicates the message and presence of the updated DVML brand, and is fully functional and user-friendly for both the internal team and visitors to the site. The finished website becomes a place to share inspiration and all necessary information and booking links, encouraging people to experience their favourite Dunedin events in person.

What made the difference

• Weekly frontend demos kept stakeholders aligned and reduced late-stage rework - the majority of final feedback was small changes
• AI-assisted development compressed the build and active development timeline without sacrificing quality
• A shared-CMS architecture gives DVML's small team genuine operational simplicity across two distinct digital properties
• Solving the Momentus integration unlocked a level of automation DVML hadn't had before, and opened the door for the same approach on the Dunedin Venues site
• The collaborative three-way partnership between Voyage, Walsh & Beck and DVML meant a successful first project completed