NBA’s Miami Heat Incorporates Giant LED Torch Inside Its New Center-Hung Scoreboard At Home Arena

September 23, 2024 by Dave Haynes

This is a good example of how LED introduces more design flexibility for digital displays in large venues – a giant LED sculpture shaped like a flame that fills the space inside an otherwise floating center-hung scoreboard and replay screen array at the arena where the NBA’s Miami Heat plays.

The logo-shaped LED sculpture is a part of 61 LED displays – covering more than 11,000 square feet at the Kaseya Center. What’s described as a first-ever Flame Ball was developed, along with the rest of the LED displays in the arena, by Daktronics. The display array is just being completed, and set to have its debut October 7th.

“Our new scoreboard is a marvel of modern technology bringing a significant increase in both the size and number of screens visible to HEAT fans,” says Eric Woolworth, President of The HEAT Group’s Business Operations, in Daktronics PR. “The flame ball itself is an impressive piece of visual art that is going to revolutionize many aspects of our in-arena experience for fans and partners alike. Our friends at Daktronics have outdone themselves and we’re forever grateful to them for helping us bring this unique project to life.”

The entire center-hung features 55 million pixels and 7,440 square feed of digital canvas. That is 1.5 times the square footage of a basketball court and would take 697 60-inch televisions to cover the entire centerhung.

The Flame Ball features 2,525 square feet of LED canvas at 2.5-millimeter pixel spacing to bring the Miami HEAT’s 3D logo sculpture to life in the middle of the center-hung configuration.

“Building first-of-its-kind creations using LED technology is something that drives our company forward and excites our employees,” says Daktronics President and CEO Reece Kurtenbach. “Bringing this iconic sculpture to life for the Miami HEAT, Kaseya Center and their audiences is a great engineering feat that we are proud to have accomplished.”

The Flame Ball is at the center of the system that hangs above the court inside the arena. Four centerhung video displays face each direction of the arena, each measuring 19.5 feet high by 29.5 feet wide and featuring 2.5-millimeter pixel spacings. Two upper rings circle the configuration above the main video displays. Each ring measures 4 feet high by 213 feet in circumference and features 3.9-millimeter pixel spacing.

On the underbelly of the center-hung, four displays measure 10 feet high by 21 feet wide and feature 2.5-millimeter pixel spacing. These displays are angled toward the edges of the court to appeal to those sitting closer to the action.

The Flame Ball, ring displays, and main video and underbelly displays are on three separate hoists to raise and lower the configuration as needed to accommodate the multiple events hosted by the Kaseya Center.

Dak also has a pile of other screens ina  avriety of format around the arena, and the in-game experience runs on the manufacturer’s show control hardware/software solution.

Kaseya Center, says the Heat, will officially unveil a series of multi-million-dollar facility upgrades when the HEAT host their yearly scrimmage, the “Red, White & Pink” Game presented by Miami Cancer Institute at Baptist Health, on Monday, October 7^th. The extensive upgrades were made during the summer months and include a new scoreboard, new lighting and audio systems, as well as a new retractable seating system in the lower bowl.