Has sports arena advertising gone too far?
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Hello, I'm Russell Padmore. And in Business Daily, the focus today is on advertising boards in sports stadiums. The LED digital boards are bigger, brighter, and using advanced technology for graphics. LED in sports stadiums, definitely seen it spread around the world.

Compared to traditional flat signs, digital advertising boards in a sports stadium can display several sponsors.

generating more revenue. But that's not always been the case in the United States. Television was not willing to allow their sponsors to be competed with by advertising in the stadiums. Sports from soccer to rugby are using digital advertising boards. But in India, cricket stadiums are making them part of the glitzy image of the IPL. What started with something that was an LED screen that would just display a scoreboard...

has now transformed into something absolutely dynamic and is cost-effective. Business Daily, examining the advancing technology in stadium pitchside advertising. During the 1920s, following the tragedy of the First World War, working people needed leisure time and watching sports like baseball, cricket, football and rugby became very popular.

The owners of stadiums had already adopted advertising to make more money, but the sponsors were mostly local companies. By the 1950s, little had changed. There it is, Brookhustle United have won.

A big football match in 1955. The BBC broadcasting the English FA Cup final at Wembley in London, with 100,000 fans watching. The stadium had no advertising boards around the pitch, which today would be seen as a missed marketing opportunity.

Susan Barton, a research fellow at the International Centre for Sports History at De Montfort University, has been telling me advertising in stadiums started more than a century ago, although it was limited. This began in the late 1800s with the commercialisation of leisure and mass consumption.

It came on a pace from the 1920s. I've seen advertising boards in photos from before there were floodlights, before there were substitutions of players in the game. We start to see advertisements at pitch side and on rooftops as well of stadium. What type of companies or perhaps even services were included on the signs around the stadium decades ago? Would it have been more local companies compared to what we see today?

The London clubs seem to have more national products which are advertised. So at Chelsea in 1921, they've got an advertisement for Bovril, a beef drink, tea, Lipton's teas. And also quite ominously for the time we think it says beware of pickpockets. Outside London, we're seeing things advertised which are much more to do with local businesses and local products, breweries, milkmen, grocers.

But the early advertisements, I think, very much part of the development of an urbanised working class and building a sense of place and community.

We're at New York's Yankee Stadium with 60,000 fans for the opening game of the 1937 World Series between the Yankees, heavy-hitting champions of the American League, and the New York Giants, National League pennant winners. For decades, baseball was the dominant game in the United States, a country which has commercialised sport.

But advertising in stadiums was limited for many years, as Mike Carlson, a veteran American sports commentator, explains. Baseball stadiums almost always had advertising because the outfield fences...

lended themselves to billboards being put on them, as did the scoreboard, which was generally behind the outfield fence. And the advertising was local. Comparing that era to today, did it really take off maybe by the 1970s? That's when big screens came in. Yeah. And to be honest, Europe was way ahead of America in terms of advertising.

where advertising would then be shown on television. And of course, television is the thing that makes the difference in this. The advertising follows the technology. Part of the problem in America in terms of stadium advertising was that television tended to pay so much in rights fees to the leagues that television was not willing to allow their sponsors to be competed with

by advertising in the stadiums. For example, the NFL makes so many billions in television rights that they have to be very careful about offending the advertisers for those networks. Ice hockey, the NHL, they've been using recently technology that appears to show different electronic advertisements in different TV regions at the same time. The NHL,

gets far less money for its TV contracts. Its appeal is still relatively regional in the US and Canada, as opposed to nationwide with baseball or basketball, American football. It's a very good point, you know, and I think that shows the difference really, really strongly. American sports commentator Mike Carlson. I'm Russell Padmore, and this is Business Daily from the BBC World Service.

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Blue skies and warm sunshine. A day to be enjoyed because it's not often the case here in Ireland, the most westerly country in the European Union. I've travelled to Dundalk, a town on the east coast close to the border with Northern Ireland. I'm at the headquarters of Audiovisual Trade Solutions, a company that supplies electronic advertising signs to stadium owners.

Stephen McLean is the business development and project manager here at AVTS. In the last 20 years worldwide, it's definitely been on a big upward curve. It's just being adopted more and more. LED in sports stadiums and kind of big concert arenas, definitely seeing it spread around the world.

You're one of the major distributors here in Ireland of these signs. Have you noticed different clubs, different teams, different sports are suddenly very interested in changing from the old traditional plastic or flat wooden sign to the more electronic digital one? It's been spreading throughout Europe. The adoption is there of large format LED indoor and outdoor. And in Ireland, we're probably one of the last in the West to adopt this.

Well, in Europe and the UK specifically, it's definitely the sport that leads the way is soccer or football. The premiership, obviously, the marketing that goes behind that worldwide is incredible. That's the English Soccer League you're talking about. But the point is when it comes to redeveloping a stadium, the first thing that kind of brings it up in terms of technological advancement are hundreds of square metres of outdoor LED perimeter screens, scoreboards, you name it.

Does it attract additional advertising revenue? Because obviously when it's pitch side with the screen displays, they have the ability to change every now and then. So there can be lots of sponsors written onto a sign during an event. Yeah, the return on investment is proven time and time again to be there. They can also use it for non-sporting events like concerts. Why is it some stadiums seem to be holding back from installing them?

It's the capital investment that's required. The next time that construction is going on in the stadium, maybe that's the time that they'll go with it.

The other bit of resistance can be, depending on the sport, how often the stadium is actually in use. It does look as though artificial intelligence is playing a role in the technological development of these LED signs. I think of the case of people perhaps watching a sports event in one city with the visiting team, with their audience on TV, watching an entirely different commercial. They seem to have a way of broadcasting different commercials at the same time, seemingly on the same board, to different television audiences no matter where they are.

That's the technology involved in broadcasting. The LED screen can complement that in the sense of how that image can be portrayed, but the advertisers and marketing folks, they absolutely love that feature because obviously it enhances the revenue that they can achieve.

I've left Dundalk and after a three-hour drive I'm in the north-west of Ireland at the Ryan McBride Brandywale Stadium, home to the League of Ireland soccer club Derry City. The fans of the visiting team, Drogheda United, are enjoying the evening because their team is winning. This stadium is very traditional with old-fashioned flat advertising signs saying

unlike the digital pitchside boards used by clubs in other countries such as England's Premier League or La Liga in Spain. So could the finances of teams like Derry City benefit from installing technically advanced LED electronic boards pitchside? The marketing side of the business could display messages from more sponsors.

but are the fans here in favour of bright graphics along the side of the field? People go to watch the match and it's also a distraction that you kind of don't need. If it was the benefit of the club, it would be interesting. I don't think there's any great benefit if you're at the match or if you're on the pitch. It might be beneficial if you're watching the TV. Would you worry that it might disrupt the play if you've got bright lights putting the players off and maybe putting the fans off? It depends on the game, how busy it is, how big the ground is. I think it's too distracting for the players.

Yeah, it would definitely look very modern and it would entice people on. They'd read the advertising boards and see what someone offers and stuff like that. Yeah, it would be really good. The possibility of LED digital boards means the prospect of more advertising, doesn't it? Therefore, better revenue for a lot of sports. That maybe is an attraction. Yeah, well, technology nowadays is coming into play in a lot of businesses. So the more they can highlight things, the more people take notice. Yeah, definitely.

How much do you think grounds would benefit from being much more modern, having LED advertising boards around the pitch side? Probably be better for revenue. A lot more revenue coming into the clubs. People like the traditional grounds, like, you know, not too much commercial, sort of takes the football atmosphere away. But I think, you know, if it's too much commercialised, like, you know. I think the LEDs are a bit...

The advertising can come later. What they really need is a scoreboard and a clock. Because all you hear is, what time is it? How long's left? BELL RINGS

From Ireland to India, a music that's very familiar to cricket fans. It's the theme used to promote Tata as the sponsor of the Indian Premier League. The IPL is a very lucrative business with a global audience. As Amir Khan, a consultant with the advisory firm 150, explains. IPL is a massive business. Their 2023 to 2027 media rights sold for about $6.2 billion worldwide.

15 million give or take per match. And if you compare that to per match basis for the English Premier League, it far outstrips that. Using the digital boards became less about it's always going to be adverse to we're going to be part of the game. We're going to have countdowns. We're going to have the wicket banners. We're going to have all these bits that make it a part of the game.

The IPL is a very interesting league because if you look back a bit as well, it's very much a commercial product that's got cricket within it as opposed to cricket with a bit of commercialisation.

The IPL has embraced LED advertising boards in cricket stadiums so much that they're part of the glitzy, exciting image of the sport. As I've been hearing from Rupa Ramani, the sports editor at First Post in Delhi. What started with something that was an innocent boundary rope or an LED screen that would just display a scoreboard has now transformed into something absolutely dynamic and

and is cost effective because it's not just relaying certain messages like you said, but it becomes an sort of an eyeball presence for a lot of sponsors and it kind of doubles up. You can have five, six, and that's a lucrative spot for a lot of sponsors to come in. No doubt about it. This is a very lucrative sport and it's just down to the advertising as well as the television audience and the rights to broadcast the sport.

The IPL itself, Russell, has sort of transformed from where television used to stand in terms of the broadcasting to now where digital has come in. So in that aspect, I think it becomes a double...

double bonanza or bonus for them because you've got the digital audience, which is not the same as the television audience. Do you think other sports around the world could perhaps learn marketing lessons linked to the advertising on these LED screens in India at those cricket stadiums? Oh, absolutely, Russell. I think that's a big aspect of how vibrant and how

attractive property IPL has become. Can you see a future where the IPL is using even more advanced technology in these digital boards around the edge of the pitch?

When virtual reality was still sort of nascent, we already had that keyed into all our broadcasting. You had logos and brands being virtually imprinted on the ground because they wanted presence when you had that long shot. We've got holograms, we've got guests and experts in certain places coming in and appearing on the cricket ground. And with AI coming in, of course, the trick would be how best you'd use it without it sort of overpowering certain other aspects. But

that again would be an added advantage. The way LED advertising screens are being used by the cricket clubs in the Indian Premier League is being watched closely by other sports, such as Australia's A-League soccer.

Melissa Barbieri is the Women's League's oldest player, a motivational speaker and a promoter of the sport in Australia. Once the LED boards are in, they're a permanent fixture in the stadium, so it's very easy to swap and change sponsors for each and every sporting code as well as sporting teams. It's amazing how much...

you know, entertainment can come from such rudimental thing around the pitch, marketing, entertainment sort of factors where the car is driving alongside the pitch and you can have a race against somebody that's superimposed on the LED screen. It's quite entertainment and a race around the pitch, you know, chasing a little chicken or something, whatever your sponsor might be for that team is quite amazing. Yeah.

Do you think then the league's brand or promotion experts have really picked up on the way technology and advertising boards is being used in Europe or elsewhere in Asia to kind of copy that because it seems to work. It adds a bit of glamour often to the matches, doesn't it? It does. And I mean, I've seen some really crazy out there ideas about a ball would pop out of the ground and a sign would be pointing to it every time there was a corner in one of the leagues. And I thought, that's super.

You have to look at these bright digital images. Maybe they're starting to be a distraction for the fans who are paying to get into the stadium.

there's a balance being met in terms of not making it too much of a distraction and then having it really come to life in those breaks of play where there's a goal scored or half-time entertainment, especially now that we can dim the entire lights of a stadium to have it go pitch black. Now you can blanket...

...cover a stadium in absolute darkness... ...and have that atmosphere really, really build... ...and using those LED light boards across the signage... ...is absolutely spectacular... ...a concert atmosphere... ...like it's not only the football that's being played on the pitch... ...but that general atmosphere of it. Advertising boards are already updated live during events... ...but the next phase of developing technology... ...is likely to involve artificial intelligence...

AI could recognize demographics of the crowd to tailor marketing messages to people of different ages. Virtual reality is being used by television broadcasters to show different messages on boards to different viewers at the same time depending on where they're watching. And as more live sport is streamed online, the technology will develop to target fans watching over the internet.

The images on the pitch side boards are so realistic that incidences of players mistakenly passing the ball to a cartoon character are increasing. And marketing teams targeting television or internet audiences will have to recognise there may be limits to bright LED pitch side boards disrupting the enjoyment of the fans in the stadium. I'm Russell Padmore, ending this edition of Business Daily.