Your Scoreboard Should Work for You

Whether it’s a little friendly competition or a battle between two rivals, someone is always keeping score. The scoreboard is the one common place spectators, coaches, referees, and athletes all refer to multiple times throughout a game. The buzzer beaters, last-minute touchdowns, and game-winning plays all depend on a scoreboard to keep the time, and ultimately, name a champion.

Scoreboards come in a vast variety of shapes, sizes, and structures to help your participants and spectators stay in the game. Are you losing points with your audience because of your scoreboard?

Your scoreboard should provide both fans and teams an easy way to engage in the game.

Lighting, materials, technology, and format are all factors when choosing a scoreboard. Static scoreboards are outdated and lack functionality. If you’re using a wooden scoreboard in a gymnasium or arena, spectators may not even have a clear view of the score in certain areas because of a lighting glare. Certain digital displays can also hinder the experience if the technology you’re using is outdated or not functional for your specific facility. 

LED scoreboards, however, offer the best of both worlds. With LED scoreboards’ bright colors and optimal designs, spectators, coaches, athletes, and referees all have a clear view of the score throughout the game, without the risk of glares or other issues.

Your scoreboard should optimize your fan engagement.

For spectators, the joy of being at sporting events is fulfilled not only by a good game, but also by the environment. Attending a game where the crowd is fully engaged—unified cheers during big plays, school fight songs, or standing at intense game points—makes the experience that much better, and it brings momentum to players and coaches as well. You just can’t beat the experience of a gym packed full of high schoolers decked out in school spirit cheering on their classmates.

LED scoreboards give you a great opportunity to help with that solidarity. Animations on the board cue the crowd to participate in different actions to keep up the motivation for those in the game and in the stands, such as starting cheers, cheering on fresh players as they take the field, or doing the wave. Even without animations, the lights and brilliant colors emitted by quality LED scoreboards will give every fan a reason to cheer a little louder whenever they see their favorite players on the screen.

Your scoreboard should be able to offer replays, interviews, and exciting highlights to fill downtime.

Along with fan engagement, wouldn’t it be nice to fill those quiet timeouts with something other than bathroom breaks or long lines at the concession stand? Junior high and high school games may not necessarily have TV commercial breaks like the NFL and NBA do, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have plenty of moments that can be used to amp up the crowd. With LED scoreboards, you can show replays of the questionable calls, showcase highlights of outstanding plays, or let the fans get to know players better by broadcasting interviews and personal snippets from practice or real life. The ability to play videos during a game gives your audience an opportunity to make a personal connection to the players and ultimately, feel more invested in the game.

Your scoreboard should be bringing in revenue.

Advertising on scoreboards is a great way to bring revenue to your organization while promoting some of the businesses around your community. Unfortunately, wooden scoreboards aren’t designed to be able to update the sponsors for your sport. It can become costly due to having to pay for a new panel to be printed and installed every season. Paper or posters can be a temporary option for sponsors, but it won’t take long for them to show signs of wear and tear. Poor representation of your sponsors’ brands can lead to unhappy sponsors or diminished support in the future. 

If you’re looking to advertise at your sporting facility, LED scoreboards offer a much broader array of marketing choices, including video ad rotations. This allows your marketing clients to get more variety and a higher effect ratio by involving fans with interactive hashtags, ads, and client offer specials. Plus, as advertisers come and go, you don’t have to pay to redo ad panels—instead, you can simply change the graphics and videos using simple software.