Sight and sound

An overview of recent innovations in three key areas of high-tech stadium technology – audio, lighting and video

There have been many exciting developments in worldwide stadium technology during recent years in terms of important facilities such as visual display screens, lighting and stadium sound systems.

The videocube at the Arena AufSchalke in
Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Photo: Torsten Lauterborn

One of the most visually spectacular developments is the Philips videocube, the first of which was installed at the newly opened AufSchalke Arena soccer stadium in Gelsenkirchen, Germany during 2001. The videocube is a structure that hangs directly above the pitch’s centre spot and is suspended from the perimeter stadium roof by a webbing system of metalwork. The cube contains four Philips’ LED video screens, one facing each side of the venue so that every spectator in the stadium has access to high-class images.

The cube at the 48,000-seat capacity arena, a World Cup 2006 venue, weighs 29 tonnes and each screen has an area of 35 sq m.

A spokesman for Schalke 04, the German top-flight football club that plays at the stadium, said: “The videocube serves as the most important source of information inside the stadium. It has great acceptance [from the spectators] because it is very useful in distributing visual information such as line-ups, playing time, video replays of goals, half-time adverts or short fan clips delivering messages. As the videocube is perfectly positioned, every spectator has an ideal view of one of the four screens.

“At football matches it is mainly used for in-stadium entertainment and at concerts for relaying pictures of the performers on stage. When we stage biathlon (a Winter Olympic sport) it is of great use for the spectators. Only here can they see if somebody hit the target when shooting.”

The videocube is suspended from the perimeter stadium roof
by a webbing system of metalwork

The second video cube in a major stadium was unveiled in Frankfurt’s 50,000-capacity Waldstadion (also known as the Commerzbank-Arena), also in Germany, during World Cup 2006. The Frankfurt videocube will consist of four 6.4 x 4.8m screens and hang 25m above the playing field.

However in the Waldstadion’s initial World Cup match between England and Paraguay the pillars connecting the video cube to the perimeter roof caused problems as the shadows they cast detracted somewhat from the view of the television audience. For the next World Cup match the problem was solved by using the retractable roof that covers the whole pitch.

Philips are also responsible for one of the largest LED screens in world stadiums, the massive 254 sq m custom-made large format screen at the 43,500-capacity Citizens Bank Park baseball stadium in Philadelphia, US which was completed in April 2004.

A spokesperson for the host team Philadelphia Phillies said: “We are thoroughly pleased with our selection of a Philips LED video display system for the main video board. Philips met our aggressive deadline and rewarded us with a product with clarity and performance that is second to none. We’ve received nothing but the highest praise for the display from our most important clientele, our fans.”

After World Cup 2006, the arrival of the 2006-07 football season will herald another exciting innovation in visual display when English Premiership club Arsenal opens its new 60,000-capacity Emirates Stadium – Europe’s first ever High Definition (HD) capable stadium, thanks to technology supplier Sony. The HD screens will provide fans with action replays of sharper images and brighter colours than ever before experienced at a European sports stadium.

A videocube at Frankfurt’s Waldstadion

Live content production will be performed in an HD production gallery and then fed to the two main 72 sq m screen displays, at either end of the stadium, as well as the network of 439 LCD screens spread evenly around the concourses and hospitality areas. The screens will display the usual match day content as well as possible wider entertainment exclusives and features.

The two large Mitsubishi screens will have a brightness of 5,000 nits (the 38 sq m screens at Arsenal’s former stadium, Highbury, had a brightness of 3,600 nits) and the palette of colours will have around a billion variants (16.7m at Highbury). The viewing angles of 140 degrees make the screens easier to see from either side, above or below.

Arsenal can also bring high-quality tailored messages to targeted audiences at Emirates Stadium through Sony’s Ziris content creation and management software, allowing the club to control and manage every aspect of its screen-based communications network.

Arsenal and Sony will also work together to equip the new, state-of-the-art, conference suites, press rooms, museum, megastore and offices with HD screens.

Arsenal’s commercial director, Adrian Ford, said: “Our vision was to create the most advanced, first HD-capable stadium in Europe. With Sony on our side, we are confident that we will achieve this goal and by August 2006 we will be able to offer a fantastic entertainment experience to Arsenal’s supporters”.

Meanwhile, the floodlighting system at the Emirates Stadium, consisting of 196 2KW lamps disguised within the “bullnose” (the leading edge of the stadium roof), will provide a brightness of 1,400 lux across the pitch.

One of the more sophisticated floodlighting systems in Europe is in northern England at the City of Manchester Stadium, which was the main venue for the 2002 Commonwealth Games but is now used by Manchester City Football Club of the English Premiership. The lighting was installed by software engineers More Solutions. Stadium officials can control the lighting using a Control and Management System supplied by Clipsal Integrated Systems (CIS). Pre-programmed, PC-redundant lighting systems such as this are becoming more and more common worldwide but are not yet universal in large-scale stadiums, despite their considerable manpower savings.

A pre-programmed loading sequence means that the City of Manchester’s Stadium floodlighting system will turn on gradually in sequence, over a period of up to two hours, because of the high current requirement in the initial few seconds of floodlights being turned on. If all the floodlights came on at full power in one go the whole of the local area would suffer from power failure.

Mark Rogers of More Solutions explains: “We know the characteristics of all the floods themselves. They have a very high current requirement for the first few seconds, then fairly high for a few minutes then it’s not too bad after that. The software’s been programmed to understand that profile and it calculates how many you can have on at a certain time and so it brings on as many as it can within the current availability. Once the current requirement drops it brings a few more lights on and so on.”

The positioning of the lights also contributes to their energy efficiency. Rogers says: “Lumineres were aligned such that it was possible to attain even lighting across the pitch at a range of predefined lux levels (50, 100, 200, 500, 800, 1,000 and 1,400 lux). Fine-tuning of the alignments was performed by the luminere manufacturer, Philips.

“The positioning of the lighting below the roof (and angled towards the pitch obviously) minimises glare and sky glow, effectively keeping the floodlighting constrained to the pitch area.”

This integrated system also ensures the lighting system is versatile enough to facilitate the staging of pop concerts and similar events, “Aside from the range of lux levels described above, individual floodlights can be controlled individually (the software takes care of managing the load management that results from this). Approximately 50 per cent of the floods are hot re-strike capable, and these can therefore be used for effects. The software could be configured to provide alternative ‘scenes’ (for example targeting only one end of the pitch)” added Rogers.

In the event of software problems at the City of Manchester Stadium, there are several levels of override. If there is a network failure, each individual floodlight can be turned on and off manually, completely bypassing the software system.

Similarly, in Portugal, the lighting at Lisbon’s Stadio de Luz, which was a key venue in the 2004 European Championships football tournament, is managed by a Philips-ECS LightMaster intelligent control system.

LightMaster is a group of networked lighting controls and any necessary changes in the application of lighting can be organised using a Windows-based software programme called LightManager. The system is highly flexible and attractive to budget-conscious users.

Of course, there is much more to lighting in stadiums than the lighting of the sporting area itself. Apart from the lighting of concourses, club offices, dressing rooms, hospitality boxes, corporate suites and so on it is vitally important that stadiums have clear exit signs for use in any potential emergency.

In Australia, Sustainable Safety Systems (SSS), a division of Holberg Industries, are making ground breaking, and environmentally friendly, developments in egress lighting.

Their photoluminescent exit sign lighting systems, such as Safety Path, are powered from external electrical lighting sources and from sunlight. So their use results in considerable energy savings, and therefore huge cost savings while greatly reducing CO2 emissions from the local power station.

From a safety perspective photoluminescent exit signs are especially useful in an emergency involving electrical light failure, because they continue to glow independently for a period of up to 12 hours. SSS’s top products are more than 100 times stronger in glow output than is required by current international standards.

In the future it is possible that photoluminescent standards will become referenced by international building codes and be written into certain building code regulations.

A further usage for lighting in stadiums is to be found at the Emirates Stadium with a revolutionary pitch growth and lighting system, which will help produce perfect grass growing conditions, even in the winter months.

The system, created by Dutch company SGL, will use lighting among other tools to help assist in controlling and managing all pitch growth factors, such as light, temperature, C02, water, air and nutrients, to create a good playing surface regardless of seasonal weather.

So in a modern stadium, fans should have great views of the sporting action aided by good lighting with visual display screens to provide replays and other information.

Another vital aspect of the spectator experience is messages and pre-match music relayed via loudspeakers.

At the Koning Boudewijn Stadium in Brussels, Belguim, Bose Professional Sound Systems have designed a sound system that ensures good speech intelligibility even amid high levels of spectator-generated noise.

The system automatically adapts its volume to changing levels of crowd noise so the announcer can still be heard during cheering, without being overwhelmingly loud when the crowd are quieter.

Bose’s Panaray LT system achieved such impressive levels of speech intelligibility at the 42,000-capacity soccer stadium by positioning speakers so that the sound is directed accurately towards the bleachers and the field, rather than all over the arena, thus reducing reverberations and echoes.

All indoor areas of the stadium also have Bose systems. Sound is controlled separately in the various zones to meet unique requirements for announcements and background music. The entire system is managed by easy-to-use computer controls that can be pre-programmed for different types of events.