Watching sports is an incredibly popular past time, especially in places like the United States. You will be hard pressed to find someone who really hates every single type of sport and never wants to watch them. When we imagine a stadium, one of the first things we imagine is the scoreboard.
Why is that? Well, it’s ideally one of the most eye-catching parts of the venue. It is what dictates the game in the eyes of many, including the viewers at home! So, if you’re looking for one, here are some tips for selecting the right one for your needs.
What Are They?
Like it sounds, they are a large sign that tracks the scores of each teach on the field. While they used to be manual, with someone in charge of flipping number cards, today they are mostly digitized. This makes it a lot easier to track the game and keep up with the changes in numbers rapidly.
A fun feature in a lot of these is that they have multiple screens. This means that you can feature something else in the middle, if you have one team listed on each side. A lot of the “kiss cams” that we see are done like that. Get creative with it – it is a great way to improve the audience experience and bring people back for several games!
Different Types
As you can expect, there are a lot of different varieties of these. That’s because they are used in several different contexts. Let’s start with one of the simpler categories.
A lot of teams with young players, like middle schoolers or high schoolers, might get a fairly small model. They don’t need something expensive or extravagant for this purpose – rather, the focus is on functionality and accuracy. A timer and section for each time is usually sufficient for this purpose.
However, once we get into the realm of professional sports, stadiums usually have a more complex digital scoreboard for the audience to look at. This is where you should break out the frills and the glamour! Having an exciting and dynamic presentation of these numbers can help people to stay more engaged with the game.
While the sport being played might seem like it is exciting enough on its own, an event at a field should be treated as such: an event. This means that all aspects of it should work in tandem to create the optimal audience experience. If you succeed, you will have more repeat customers! Obviously, that’s something we all want.
Each sport has a different sort of setup for theirs. For example, a baseball board will probably be different than a basketball one. Part of this is due to where the games are played. An outdoor activity will need a larger and more eye-catching model, while an indoor event like basketball usually has it hanging from the ceiling with at least four screens for viewing from each seat in the room.
Hockey is generally like basketball because the arenas are indoors. The ice needs to be kept frozen, so there are very few places that could host it outdoors. Most indoor stadiums have a few scoreboards for the audience to look at and keep track of, and they do not need to be as large.
For something like football, though, this is where some of the largest options find a good home. The fan fair involved with these games means that exciting visuals and animations or featuring audience members or a team mascot on a large LED screen can make it even more fun.
So – Should You Get One?
If you oversee a stadium and the decorating of it, I recommend investing in one. If you read any articles about making sports more fun, you’ll see that it will pay off. Being able to keep track of each team’s performance is important for most viewers!
We all want to root for our preferred team, after all. A scoreboard that has special animations each time the home team gets a point can be a big crowd pleaser, as just one example of utilizing this technology.
A lot of them also come with speakers, and if you put some other audio equipment throughout the stadium, you can play music that pumps up fans and gets them ready for the action. It can also keep people interested during intermissions or breaks, which are often seen as a nuisance.
Having screens spread out amongst a stadium so that they can be seen anywhere is another good tactic to employ. This especially includes near refreshment stands. This way, no one feels like they cannot get up and get a new soft drink or snack!
Digital scoreboards can really help to improve the experience of those visiting a stadium. Check them out if you haven’t yet!
