The City of Moncton is spending $1.4 million on a digital scoreboard for the under construction Downtown Events Centre.
Venues Manager Shane Porter says this new board is the latest and greatest technology, and is a huge leap forward over the existing one at the Coliseum.
“It’s not just the scoreclock and the video boards themselves, it’s the software that helps run them, it’s the equipment behind the scenes,” says Porter. “It’s the ease of use, you can go from still images, to instant replay, to, you know, advertising to you name it.”
Porter says the screen is a significant upgrade over the Coliseum scoreboard and “it’s got this centre ring, and some of the corner pieces [that allows] running different things on those different components while there’s playback on the screen, it’s just got a lot more functions than what we’ve seen at the Coliseum.”
He says it is more than just a scoreboard for a hockey game, and includes handheld cameras for an enhanced experience for other types of events.
“One example is, if you had an orchestra playing, or something along those lines, you could actually use those cameras and feed that directly to the board,” says Porter. “So if you’re farther away you’d be able to see the action up close.”
The scoreboard is $400,000 more expensive than originally budgeted, and it will be paid out of the existing $7.2 million contingency fund.