Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., has a new 4,532sq-ft HD scoreboard, which is more than three times larger than the display at nearby RFK Stadium. It the second largest scoreboard of all the MLB parks, with the BravesVision board in Atlanta being the largest.
In addition to the new board, there are 600ft of LED ribbon along the inner bowl fascia of the stadium. This will display ticker messages. Fans got a first glimpse of the new board on the March 30 edition of ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball.”
The scoreboard, 101ft by 47ft, is a Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision HD display with a new scoreboard control room equipped by Sony. ANC Sports Enterprises, which operates the LED display, and Mitsubishi collaborated on the creation of the scoreboard and the line doubling video system that displays more than 1 million pixels.
ANC Sports Enterprises also built the Sony control room. It contains a Sony MVS-8000 production switcher, Sony HDC-1400 and XDCAM cameras, an Avid Deko 3000, Adobe After Effects, three Apple Final Cut Pro editing systems and an EVS replay server. ScorePAD software is used to provide stats.
Nationals Park has more than 3 million feet of cabling and is outfitted with 14,000 lights. The stadium has 41,222 seats, slightly less than RFK Stadium where the capacity is 46,000.
To generate income to support the scoreboard, fans will be able to submit birthday and anniversary announcements that will be displayed on the board. Requests must be made five days in advance and include a $100 donation to the Washington Nationals Dream Foundation. Eventually, fans will be able to submit scoreboard requests online.
