The UEFA Championship has kicked off in France, building up momentum for football fans around the world. Two giant 70-square-meter Daktronics LED screens at the Stade Matmut Atlantique, in Bordeaux, give the audience a close look at the beautiful game’s action.
Held every four years, the UEFA European Championship consists of qualifying competitions, playoffs and a final tournament. For the first time in its history, 24 teams are contesting the title. Five of these important games are being played at the Matmut Atlantique, the largest stadium by the Atlantic sea.
Opened less than a year ago, the Matmut Atlantique, also known as the Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux, has a capacity for 42,000 people.
Alain Castelbou, sales manager at Daktronics in France explains, “This stadium is owned by the Vinci group together with the Fayat group. Its design is from one of the best architectural firms, Herzog & de Meuron. The renowned architects specialise in stadia and, amongst others, designed the St Jakob-Park stadium in Basel as well as the national stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games in China. Naturally, a company like Vinci, which has privately owned stadia all over the world for over 30 years, demanded the best LED technology for this outstanding venue.
Local installer Pekason was appointed to provide the two LED displays. Pekason teamed up with Daktronics to deliver the 15mm HD LED screens, hanging from the stadium’s roof, strategically placed on each side of the stadium. The roof has a singular rectangular shape and has been design to shelter the audience from bad weather while also letting through the sunlight. Daktronics screens are engineered to be clearly visible in blazing sunshine and also withstand all weather challenges. The stadium has three configurations suitable for football, rugby and concerts.
The bowl is organized around the playing field following a geometry that guarantees optimal visibility to the spectators, designed following an English-style topology. A key feature is what is now dubbed as the ‘Wembley safety barriers.’ The Matmut Atlantique has no need for a pit or barrier to separate the fans from the field of play, which are only 10 metres away from the first rows. The stadium has used one-metre-high safety barriers equipped with elastic cables that prevent spectator access to the field and give an unobstructed view of the game – a method tried and tested at Wembley stadium in London. The upper tiers have glass barriers for perfect visibility and the Daktronics screens have a perfect 160 viewing angle, so fans will not miss a thing at the Matmut Atlantique.
We have already seen two exciting games at this stadium where Wales beat Slovaquia 2-1 (June 11th) and Hungary beat Austria 2-0 (June 14th). The games broadcasting on the LED screens went flawlessly thanks to Daktronics’ Show Control, an industry-leading system that provides a combination of display control software, world-class video processing, data integration and playback hardware for a user-friendly production solution. A dedicated Technician is on site to make sure everything displayed on the Daktronics screens goes according to plan.
The whole of the southern French town of Bordeaux has been turned into a football town, including a giant screen in the centre of town on the “Esplanade des Quinconces.” There are three games to come at the Matmut Atlantique: Belgium v Republic of Ireland (June 18th), Croatia v Spain (June 21st) followed by the quarter finals (July 2nd).
