Our 2013 NFL Tech Series follows all 32 NFL teams up until kickoff on Week 1. Each feature includes the latest from each organization, spanning stadium WiFi upgrades, mobile technology, fan engagement, and the tech used by players and coaches to gain an edge. Front office personnel and technology staff throughout the league provided an inside look at how each team plans on improving their franchise through hi-tech advancements. In this new age of technology in sports we are uncovering the many new innovations and strategies being used by teams and where the present and future of NFL technology lies. Today, we look at the Houston Texans and their installation of the world’s largest in-stadium HD video display board.
Everything is bigger in Texas. For the Texans, it is 561% bigger.
That percentage is the increase in image area that happened when the Houston Texans replaced their old standard definition video boards with two enormous high defintion video boards in Reliant Stadium. Quite literally, the installation of the new video display boards are one of the largest technological enhancements that any NFL team will be making this season. The image area of one of the video boards is 55 feet high and 277 feet wide, making it the largest in-stadium HD video display board in the world (Sorry Cowboys fans but this screen is about 30% larger than yours).
In the image below the white dashes represent the size of the new video boards and demonstrate just how much larger the new image area will be.
The video boards upgrade came at a very strategic time for the Houston franchise. They are one of the early season favorites to come out of the AFC and in May they won the bid to host the 2017 Super Bowl. Team President Jamey Rootes explained to us exactly how important he thought the addition of the two video boards over each end zone were in landing the Super Bowl bid: “Our new HD video displays definitely helped us to secure the Super Bowl for Houston and Reliant Stadium. We have an outstanding facility, we provide a thrilling game day experience and the city has proven to be an amazing host of major sporting events. The video board enhancement was important because it showed our community’s commitment to keeping Reliant Stadium state-of-the-art and among the leading stadiums on the planet. We feel the boards will allow us to take the in stadium experience to a new level for the Super Bowl and all of the 100+ events at Reliant Stadium each year.”
In addition to playing a role in securing a Super Bowl bid for Houston, the behemoth displays will help the Texans fight one of the NFL’s biggest enemies; the couch. Fans are staying home in record numbers to enjoy the Sunday action from the comforts of their living rooms. While the NFL brand has not lost any value or interest from fans, stadium attendance has dropped. The perfect way to combat this drop in attendance and pull fans away from their TVs is to install the largest video displays in the NFL that will show game stats, scores from around the league, and fantasy football updates all in high definition. Additionally, a digital clock and down and distance marker will replace the matrix displays that served the same purpose.
The new displays will drastically improve the fan experience and give Houston fans even more of a reason to come support their team in person. Rootes explains just how the display boards will be utilized during games to improve the in-game experience at Reliant Stadium: “The in stadium experience will be enhanced significantly by our new HD video displays. We know our fans love replays and our new boards will allow us to deliver them throughout the game with a video image that is both massive and HD quality. We can also provide multiple angles of the same replay that will provide our fans with a perspective that takes them inside the game.”
These replays can offer a unique perspective and different content versus what fans can see from home. Thus, creating a better experience in the stands.
“We will encourage interactivity by soliciting tweets and pictures from fans that will be shown on the video displays prior to the game. We can also generate an even greater level of fan interactivity throughout the game because we can run animations and live-action simultaneously. For instance, we can play a ‘NOISE’ animation while J.J. Watt is on screen waving his arms to get the fans going,” says Rootes.
What better way to pump up a crowd for the game and make them feel like part of the Texans family than to include their tweets and pictures on the largest in-stadium displays in the world? This is a smart way for the Texans to encourage social media interaction and give fans a great reward for attending games and showing their support for the team.
“The size of our displays provides us with space to also deliver the information our fans have told us they desire on game day, like out-of-town scores, fantasy leader updates, in-game statistics and side-by-side stat comparison. Lastly, the software that drives the displays will allow our production staff to create some really amazing videos for our fans that should provide for an even more entertaining experience. The size, clarity and quality of our new displays and the functionality of our new video control system will allow us to take the NFL’s best fan experience to another level.”
The Texans made a huge investment by installing these gargantuan video display boards and so far it seems to be paying off. They won the bid to host the Super Bowl in four years and they have added many new ways to improve the fan experience during games and bring fans to Reliant Stadium. Between the other enormous video display in Dallas and now these ones in Houston, it’s safe to say that the Texas teams are taking their states famous saying to heart and making everything bigger. Now it remains to be seen if other NFL teams will follow the Texans’ lead and improve their stadiums in similar ways.
