Raymond James Stadium, Tampa's host venue for the Super Bowl, has been temporarily illuminated with state-of-the-art LED technology as part of a city-wide beautification effort for the championship game on February 1. Philips/Color Kinetics is helping illuminate the stadium from dusk to dawn with the newly launched ColorReach™ Powercore, one of the biggest, brightest exterior LED's in the world.

    Super Bowl lights

    Philips floodlights in action

Over 70 state-of-the-art Philips ColorReach LED fixtures are now lighting the top of the stadium in brilliant color. With only two fixtures required to flood each 40 by 80 foot bay, the lighting designer Dall Brown chose the ColorReach because quite literally, NO other LED fixture currently available would even come close to achieving that. Each fixture is individually programmable and can produce millions of colors and color-changing effects, which enables the stadium to display the colors of the opposing teams as well as providing dazzling lighting effects.

The ColorReach units are capable of projecting over 500 feet using only 22,000 watts total electricity. Mounted on a concrete cross beam from within the stadium, the fixtures project light onto the backside of the stadium's upper 30 rows, making the Raymond James Stadium visible from the air and from multiple viewpoints across the city of Tampa. This feat would normally require well over 100,000 watts of power and still wouldn't offer the color and brilliance of the ColorReach package. By using LED lighting, the NFL is achieving their goal of making the event as "green" as possible.

In addition to generating dynamic effects, ColorReach Powercore supports the National Football League's recent efforts to make the Super Bowl event more "green." The temporary lighting scheme requires minimal energy; just 290 W per fixture. Even when operating at full intensity, ColorReach Powercore consumes less than half the energy of a typical coffeemaker. By comparison, the traditional metal halide fixtures typically used in such exterior projects consume 1,600 W each and require gels to produce colored lighting.

Other Philips Color Kinetics installations in entertainment and sporting venues include Boston's TD Banknorth Garden and Bank of America Pavilion, Los Angeles' Hollywood Bowl, Milwaukee's Marcus Center for the Performing Arts and Sweden's Globen Arena.