2023 Football Stadium Lights Buyer's Guide

What Are The Best Stadium Lights? Why do metal halide lamps, halogen lamps, high pressure sodium lamps, and mercury lamps need to replace LEDs? What factors should be considered when buying football stadium lights? This article will briefly describe how LEDs can be used to light outdoor stadiums that meet FIFA World Cup, Olympic, Premier League and UEFA standards.

Starting to prepare documents and products for a lighting tender is exciting. To increase our chances of success, the first tips we need to consider are lighting requirements, including lux (brightness) and uniformity.

There are many regulations regarding stadium lighting. According to UEFA lighting guidelines, there are six types of football pitches. Europa League Final Elite Class A, Super Cup Final Class A, Semi-Final Class B, Qualifying Class C, etc. The lighting standard increases with the importance and popularity of the competition, say we have the highest final standard.

1. Brightness of football field

sports floodlights

Lighting is divided into two parts, horizontal brightness and vertical brightness. The horizontal is for the light to cover the entire pitch, and the vertical is for player portraits. The document states that the lighting of the stadium shall be 2000lux horizontally and 1500lux vertically. For this setup we will need hundreds of sets of high powered LED flood lights.

2. Illumination Uniformity

UEFA also requires stadium lighting to have a uniformity of 0.5 to 0.7. This parameter is based on a scale of 0 to 1, indicating how evenly distributed the brightness is. This is an important consideration, as uneven lighting can irritate the eyes of both players and spectators. In fact, it is not an easy task to achieve high uniformity, because we can imagine the spot to be circular (or often rectangular), with overlapping and non-overlapping areas. One of the techniques we employ is to use LED lights with a smaller beam angle and less power. An asymmetrical design improves lighting distribution. We provide LED lights for international competitions such as Premier League and Olympic Games.

3. TV Broadcast Compatibility

Now is the new era of 4K TV broadcasting. Uniform and high-quality vertical brightness on the LED floodlights allows for high standards of photo and video production. Therefore, we also strive to reduce the glare of the lamps. Anti-glare optics in our LED lights won't cause flickering and glare to players and spectators. This technology is achieved through special lens caps and coatings that suppress unwanted flare while maintaining brightness.

4. Stadium roof height

The height of the luminaire is generally within 30-50 meters; therefore, we need high-quality LED lighting without too much loss of brightness. In fact, with today's technology, light loss is sometimes unavoidable, because no matter how precise your photometric design is, not all beams are 100% projected onto the football field. Instead, part of the lumen (approximately 30%) diffuses to the periphery. To solve this problem, we have two methods.

1) Use better optics

Sports floodlights with high-quality optics

With high-quality LED chips and lens caps, the beam is more concentrated and reduces brightness loss; however, the limitation is that we cannot use these lights over the entire football field, because the uniformity will be reduced - imagine countless circular spots on the ground. Therefore, it is necessary to achieve a good balance through a comprehensive photometric design.

2) Increase the number of lamps used

Installing more floodlights on the stadium ceiling to prevent lumen loss is a relatively passive way. For example, if the theoretical (calculated) value is 10000 watts, we end up needing at least 12000 to 13000 watts for optimal results.

5. Save electricity bills

Get a quick overview of the total power required for football stadium lights. We can do the following calculations. Take the traditional 105m*68m football field as an example. A lawn of 7140 square meters requires 7140 * 2000 lux = 14,280,000 lumens. What does it mean? Since our stadium floodlights have an efficacy of 140 lm/W, the minimum wattage of the LEDs should be 14,280,000 / 140 = 102,000 watts. This is the theoretical minimum we need because we also need to account for the light loss and fixture height mentioned above. Before doing computer lighting simulations, we would know that the required power is about 150,000 watts. Isn't it incredible?

Speaking of which, you may ask, what would happen if I used metal halide lamps to illuminate the football field? The answer is to double the amount of electricity required! Since the luminous efficiency of metal halide lamps is about 70 lm/W, the required power is about 300,000 watts. Therefore, replacing metal halide lamps with stadium lights can save a lot of energy and thus save on electricity bills.

6. Stadium light pollution problem

Too bright stadium lights will affect the quality of life of people around, and the top lighting of stadiums must not cause light pollution. Severe light leakage will affect adjacent residential areas. In fact, the brightness of the ground around the arena should not exceed 25 to 30 lux. Has become one of the lighting requirements.

7. Longer service life

led football field floodlight

By retrofitting metal halides to LED lights, the lifetime of the light fixture was greatly increased to 80,000 hours. If left on for 8 hours a day, our products will last at least 25 years without significant loss of brightness. LEDs are also considered a durable light due to their solid state properties. Our retrofit lighting products do not contain delicate components such as surface soldering and gold wires.

8. Good cooling system

Another reason for the high durability is that our football stadium LED lights have a very good heat dissipation system. In fact, if the heat keeps accumulating around the LED chip, it will reduce the brightness and life; therefore, we also pay great attention to improving the heat sink to lower the junction temperature of the lamp for long-term operation. Typically, this is achieved by a large circular arrangement of aluminum extension fins containing a large surface area.

9. Durability of floodlights

Replacing stadium lighting with metal halides will allow us to provide stronger materials for luminaires. That's because our LED lights are made of polycarbonate and high-quality aluminum alloy. The material is corrosion resistant so it is unlikely to break in normal use. In addition, our products have IP66 waterproof certification. It can withstand heavy rain and general water splashes.

10. Warranty

From our experience, LED companies usually offer a 1 to 5 year warranty. Why not choose one with a longer shelf life so you can always get fast support from the company. Hishine Group Limited provides a 5-year warranty, so you can rest assured to buy.