Vizrt – Girraphic Intuit Dome Halo Board and Venue Graphics
This summer, after the planet’s biggest football tournament, visiting fans went home talking, not just about the games, but about the American venues themselves. It wasn’t just the sheer size that won them over. It was the spectacle.
Walk into any modern sports venue today and you’ll see why. LED boards are doing far more than just showing the score. They’re front-and-center storytelling platforms. From halo boards and ribbon displays to walkout tunnels, perimeter graphics and concourse screens, every surface can build anticipation, mark the big moments, showcase sponsors, and spotlight fans pulling them closer to the action.
Using visuals to attract more eyeballs is an approach broadcasters have perfected over decades. Now, venues of every size are adopting the same playbook.
The result? More memorable events for fans, greater operational flexibility and new monetization opportunities from existing LED infrastructure.
The challenge: Create one connected fan experience
When Netflix hosted its first MVP MMA event at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, Vizrt partner Girraphic faced a unique challenge. The job wasn’t only to build the graphics for the broadcast. It was to mirror them across every screen in the building, and run the whole thing from one interface.
The Intuit Dome is famous for one reason – fan-first design. It’s the most technologically advanced basketball arena in the world, but all that tech serves one goal, making every seat feel like the best one in the house, with a clean line to the Halo Board.
The mandate: Turn every screen in the venue into part of the live experience.
The Intuit Dome is famous for one reason – fan-first design.
Yes, it’s THE most technologically advanced basketball arena in the world, but it was built around a core purpose – make every seat a premium watching experience, with exceptional view of the Halo Board.
For Girraphic and Vizrt this meant – from the iconic halo board to walkout tunnels and LED displays surrounding the hexagon, every graphic element had to feel connected, and every fan, regardless of where they were sitting, should feel immersed in the same story.
One operator. One platform. Every screen.
Girraphic is a Vizrt design powerhouse. What they did was to build a graphics package based on their existing MMA and boxing templates using Viz Artist, rendered out with Viz Engine the rendering engine trusted by the biggest broadcasters, and layered Viz Multiplay into the workflow for multiscreen control.
The entire stadium deployment was completed in just two days.
One graphics package that could be easily updated if fight cards changed, or new graphics were required. No duplications, just one operator managing all screens though one unified interface workflow with superchannels. Superchannels are media containers in Viz Multiplay. The operator prepares content in layers, and can trigger this content (graphics, clips, streams, live content, etc) in a variety of ways live to air to different outputs or areas on the canvas. It’s like having multiple virtual renderers in Viz Engine. Every bout can have its own series of graphics. All controlled from one interface.
So, every display – from the Intuit Dome’s iconic halo board to the walkout tunnel and LED boards around the hexagon – was controlled from a single interface. By a single operator.
The Halo Board alone features over 233 million individual LEDs. Altogether, its double-faced, 4K screen packs a combined resolution of around 240 million pixels.
Inner Display: 9.8m (32 feet) high by 190m (623 feet) in circumference.
Outer Display: 8.5m (28 feet) high by 201m (661 feet) in circumference.
Stack it up and that’s more than 3,500 65-inch TVs.
Not your everyday broadcast graphics undertaking. But accomplished in no time with Vizrt technology.
Faster changes. More flexibility.
Fight cards change.
Sponsors change.
Schedules change.
Traditionally, every update meant creating and rendering multiple versions of the same graphic for different screens.
Not this time.
"When last-minute changes hit a fight card, you simply can't afford to re-render 700 to 1,000 files. We need cost-effective ways to do this. By going real-time with Vizrt, we made the addition of an entire LED row in the walkout corridor a matter of scaling just one template. That kind of nimbleness is a gamechanger for live event production at any scale."
Nathan Marsh
CEO & Managing Director, Girraphic Group
No duplicate workflows. No production delays.
For venue operators, that means less time managing issues and more time creating memorable experiences for fans. To put it in another way, operational efficiency.
Beyond the fan experience: Unlocking more value from every screen
Premium in-venue experiences don’t just benefit spectators.
They create measurable business value and greater return on investment.
A unified graphics workflow enables venues to:
- Deliver a premium atmosphere regardless of venue size.
- Maximize existing LED infrastructure without additional operational complexity.
- Create more glossy AR graphics and sponsor inventory across multiple displays.
- Reduce production overhead with a single-operator workflow.
- Adapt quickly to last-minute changes.
The result is a venue that’s more agile, more commercially attractive and better equipped to deliver world-class experiences for fans and sponsors, regardless of event.
A playbook for the next generation of venues
We’re fans too. And we know fans compare – with other stadiums and watching big sporting events on TV. Right now, the world’s biggest sporting event is taking place in the US, Canada and Mexico – and you can bet we are looking both at what’s happening on the pitch and how stadiums are entertaining fans.
One surefire way to win over attendees is to put them, or their content, on the big screen. Think social posts, live reactions, or even the fans themselves. The Portland Trail Blazers often have fun with their fans through playful big-screen moments, like this elbow-angle analysis measured using Viz Libero.
Immersive venue experiences aren’t reserved for the world’s largest stadiums. Nor are they only reserved for the biggest games or events. With innovative AR and data-driven real-time graphics design and operational efficiencies that make it easy to adapt content for sports, concerts and exhibitions, venues of any size, from colleges to state-of-the-art arenas, can create a great day out for fans, year-round.
Because people don’t just attend events. They are no longer passive spectators. They expect – and deserve – a great experience. Make it worth their while to turn up and share online.
Ready to make every seat the best seat in your house?
The Intuit Dome project demonstrates Vizrt’s ability to power one of the world’s most demanding in-venue graphics deployments with a single control workflow. Talk to us on how you too can create premium graphics for all your screens. To see our other projects, download the Look Book.
*Vizrt’s Customer Solutions Advisor (Sports) Nick Watkins worked closely with Girraphic throughout the deployment, helping configure the workflow, optimize the system and ensure everything was ready for the live production.
