18 years in the making

The 2016-2017 season has come to a close at Raymond James Stadium. This year proved to be the year of improvement! It started with the demolition of 18 year old Daktronics displays. In 1998 Raymond James opened its doors showing off new state-of-the-art video boards from Daktronics. Over the 18 years a team of Daktronics employees developed a strong relationship with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. When the time came for an upgrade, the long lasting product and the strong relationship built won Daktronics the opportunity to install bigger and better displays!

Power supply signed by Field Engineer Jim Welter in 1998

The facelift included 14 new displays totaling more than 39,000 square feet of LED space and more than 23 million LEDs. This allowed the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to get creative with content. During moments of exclusivity, such as touchdowns or the show opens, content is integrated across multiple displays. Canons shoot off from the main video and corner displays and travel across the ribbon displays for a cohesive design. With the expansion of video real estate, during pregame for a 4 o’clock start time, the corner displays show live in-progress 1 o’clock games from around the league. Then they transition during game to a playlist of in-game stats, fantasy stats and social media. In order to achieve these different looks through the event, the VP-6000 is used. The VP-6000, or video processor, is Daktronics newest processor. This processor allows the user to smoothly transition between the pregame look and the in-game look.

In addition to the Buccaneers season, Raymond James Stadium also hosts college football. The University of South Florida occupies the stadium on Saturdays during the season. This year the stadium was host to the College Football National Championship to end the football season with a bang! Dustin Culhane takes us behind the scenes of the National Championship game.

This post was written by Melissa, a Daktronics Field Customer Trainer