Bristol Motor Speedway’s newly announced center-hung video board takes the next step for improving the fan experience in motorsports and positions the track to book more high-profile events, according to track officials.
Executives at Speedway Motorsports Inc., the track’s owner, think the new center-hung video board will help attract more events such as monster truck shows, boxing, concerts and professional wrestling. It also could start a trend for other tracks hosting NASCAR events to consider center-hung setups, said Jerry Caldwell, Bristol’s general manager.
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Rendering shows the center-hung video board positioned over next year’s Tennessee-Virginia Tech football game.
Photo by: COURTESY OF BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY
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“It’s going to be interesting to see what it means for other tracks and outdoor facilities in general,” Caldwell said. “We’re turning Bristol into the ultimate man cave.”
SMI last week announced a $6 million project touted as the largest center-hung display at an outdoor facility. Produced by Panasonic Enterprise Solutions, the four screens measure 30 feet tall and 63 feet wide.
The board, dubbed “Colossus,” is suspended above the infield by a truss with cables anchored to four supporting towers outside the track. From the ground to the top of the structure is 160 feet, or about 50 feet higher than Bristol’s older and much smaller four-sided board, which was mounted on a pylon.
The new board, which has the same protection against harsh weather as Times Square billboards, should be installed by April in time for the first of Bristol’s NASCAR race weekends. It’s a key piece of event presentation for the Tennessee-Virginia Tech football game set for Sept. 10, and the board’s placement above the infield puts it at the 50-yard line in football mode, track officials said.
Panasonic Enterprise Solutions, the provider of big screens at SMI tracks in Charlotte and Fort Worth, Texas, will provide production staff to run the board for all events at Bristol, said Doug Moss, the firm’s vice president of sales and marketing and former president of the Arizona Coyotes.
The new board was designed so that the individual screens can be removed from the structure’s framework and used for video displays at the Bristol Dragway next door and events away from the motorsports complex. In that respect, the boards still generate revenue for the track and its rental partner, GoVision, during the large gaps between events at the Bristol property.
GoVision, a Texas-based company specializing in setting up portable video displays in sports, plans to use portions of the center-hung board to form video screens for golf tournaments and, potentially, the NCAA Final Four, where the vendor helps build stadium displays. It has done the same thing in the past with TCU’s football scoreboard and portable screens owned by the Dallas Cowboys. Bristol’s board supplies GoVision with 10,000 square feet of inventory tied to 6-millimeter LED technology, the highest resolution on the market, said Chris Curtis, the company’s president and CEO.
