Scoreboards

The 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles brought about many changes. Not only was the city of Los Angeles rearranging every aspect of their existence to be a host city, but there was an entire buzz of new athletes that were entering the fold. One of these athletes was Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

Born in 1962, Jackie was named after Jackie Kennedy. Little did her parents know that their daughter was destined for greatness. Jackie excelled in all kinds of sports, but in high school proved her worth by qualifying for the 1980 Olympic Trials in Long Jump competition. But it wasn’t until she watched the movie about Babe Didrikson Zaharias that she made the decision to train for the track and fields event. This is a multiple disciplinary level and is considered one of the most difficult.

It is difficult to believe that ten years has passed since the horror of 9/11. Each and every American citizen felt helpless on that day. Loved ones were lost without apparent meaning or reason. Our dazed moments turned to the understanding that we had to do something in honor of those that were gone. Albertus Magnus High School, in Bardonia, NY lost five of their alumni members on that sad day, and they have decided to dedicate a new scoreboard in memory of those that had fallen. Five of the Albertus Magnus High School Falcons have been given a place of honor: Brian Novotny, Kevin Reilly, Michael McHugh, Michael Roberts and Sean Fegan.

Born in 1961, Nadia became entranced by gymnastics by the young age of 6 years old. She was discovered and then trained by Bela Karolyi, the famed gymnastic coach. Karolyi and his wife were impressed with Nadia’s talent, but also her work ethic. Her own personal memories of that time included the fact that she continued to try, even though she fell a lot. She was only seven when she was entered into the Romanian National Junior Championship. While she finished in thirteenth place, it gave Nadia a taste of getting close to winning.

Our demand for the best technology is insatiable, and sports fans seem to be on the top of that food chain. Big isn’t big enough, it now has to be gigantic, in full blazing HD color and in our face. Some of the nation’s largest scoreboards give a view of such excellence that the people in the nosebleed area think they are on the field. This is the era of electronic scoreboard-a-rama.

In 2009, the Dallas Stadium premiered their 160’ HD display. This goes beyond a scoreboard: weighing in at 1.2 million pounds, it requires a team of technology experts to operate it and the cost was twice that of the old stadium used by the Cowboys. The screen was an extravaganza of brilliance. The color was crisp and every fan was aglow with the view. There was only one problem with something so large – when an opposing team’s backup punter made a rather non-descript kick, the football bounced and ricocheted off the screen. It turns out the entire thing was too low.

There’s no denying that we are surrounded by advertising and marketing via more venues than ever before. In the old days, we were limited to television, radio and billboard. The technology stream has opened up the worlds of the internet websites, social media and now even our smartphones. With the entire marketing buzz, it is often a conundrum when you are trying to design creative and imaginative advertising for your electronic scoreboards.

The general public is fairly savvy when judging the difference between a good ad and a bad one. One example of the demand for good ads is the incredible popularity of Super Bowl ads. There are people that may not be football fans, but they will go online just to view that year’s ingenuity in advertising.

It is now common place to attend any game and see a scoreboard. Every team, whether indoor, outdoor, home or away is very aware of the affect a scoreboard can have on the game. In today’s competitive arena, a sports team has to market themselves in the same branding of excellence as any other product. There are too many high quality media sources to offer alternatives to attendance and support, and the team needs a good electronic scoreboard to bring the fans in.

The owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Barney Dreyfuss, had a dream in 1903 to create the most beautiful stadium in the country. He wanted to move the Pirates from the Exposition Park location to a seven acre area in Pittsburgh. The design he selected would blend with the other buildings in the district of Schenley Park. At the time, that location was a bit of a trolley ride (10 minutes) from downtown and the project became known as “Dreyfuss’ Folley”. The name didn’t last long mainly due to his design concept: a 3-tiered stadium of concrete and steel, setting precedence for a stadium design as the first one in the country.

It is hard to believe that in the last five years, there has been so much of a technology jump. As a world society, we have made a leap from the net as an information source, to an entertainment resource. The universe of electronic scoreboards has been one of the top changes, morphing from a method to view a team’s score to hit videos on such sites as YouTube.

Sports fans have always pushed technology to move forward. Some of the first computer graphic commercials were designed for the Super Bowl. When the fans got a taste of those, they simply wanted more. With the advent of the net as a social media forum and the commonality of smartphones, the evolution of electronic scoreboards has kept up with the demand. The scoreboards are at a level of technology that they will often contain streaming video, sponsorship announcements and replays. These are both sent to a direct feed to the net as well as personally filmed on video with our cameras.

Any sports fan that ever heard the word “Astrodome” – knew exactly what and where it was. Commonly known as the Houston Astrodome, this was notably the first stadium build for multi-sports purpose. The grand opening in 1965, displayed the domed façade and it quickly became known as the “Eighth Wonder of the World”. Judy Garland as well as the famed super group “The Supremes” were the highlight of performance in the opening night.

The design was based on a rain-out game attended by the former mayor of Houston. Inspired by the ancient Roman concept to offer a velaria to protect the viewers, he changed his project direction and began working on getting a domed stadium in place.