Video boards are an integral part of the in-venue sports experience, and they are not restricted to the traditional shapes of television displays in that role. Replacing traditional rectangular scoreboards with rectangular video boards was an obvious first move, but venues also quickly applied video to long strips of fascia available within the architectural design natural for stadiums and arenas. A logical additional step was to boost concession businesses by making the game play available on televisions visible to those locations, throughout the venue.

More than ever, video is acquired and consumed on mobile devices, and very often handheld, with the long axis of the device in a vertical orientation. Villanova University is an early adopter of new vertical format displays from ANC, into their Jake Nevin Field House. The installed displays look like a large cell phone, the video device of choice of today’s generation, rather than the traditional widescreen TV set of a generation past. Their marketing and media production team have responded with content tailored to the strengths of this format, using the powerful production capabilities of NewTek’s TriCaster^® Mini HD-4sdi.

SVG reports: “During typical game action, the board is usually sliced up into three segments: clock and score up top, a square live video feed of game action in the center, and stats or ad space across the bottom. For special content – like pre-game hype videos, starting lineups, or full ad breaks – they use the full area of the board.”

Ryan Christiansen, Multimedia and Production Coordinator for the Villanova athletic department notes, “Player capsules look really good because you can see the full body of the athlete. It’s a unique experience. They look like giant baseball cards.”

“[This new video board format] speaks to the kind of videos people put out on social media,” says Christensen. “We’ve had to produce content by thinking outside the box. From a production standpoint, we really had to take full advantage of what the TriCaster can do. We had to learn all the ins and outs of it.”

Read the complete story at Sports Video Group: How Villanova Is Programming Uniquely-Shaped Videoboards at Jake Nevin Field House

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