More professional sports clubs choose LED lighting

An interesting development is happening in professional football.

More and more clubs chose to light their stadiums with LED lighting. This does not only include the larger stadiums, but also the smaller stadiums and training accommodations. AAA-LUX, one of the leading suppliers of LED lighting, delivers to more and more clubs in for example the German Bundesliga, the English Premier League, Dutch Football  and the Italians Serie A, and, for instance, also several training accommodations for the World Cup 2022 in Qatar.

Smart stadium renovation
Not only the larger stadiums are choosing LED lighting. Remarkably, there is an increase in smaller stadiums and practice fields. Since the start of this season, RKC Waalwijk, a club from the Dutch second division, has a new lighting system in their stadium that runs completely on LED. The switch from conventional to LED lighting has pleased RKC Waalwijk. “RKC Waalwijk has renovated their stadium to the premier division standards and we wanted to carry this out throughout all our facilities, including the stadium lighting.  It is a sustainable solution of high quality with interesting cost reductions. The existing masts could easily be re-used, provided that no extra weight would be applied to the masts. Due to the light weight of the AAA-LUX luminaires, this was not a problem and thus new masts were not necessary. And that is beneficial to the costs,” Frank van Mosselveld, general manager of RKC Waalwijk, explains.

Accessible for more clubs
Converting from conventional light to LED lighting is not as easy as it seems. “Generally, LED luminaires are larger and heavier than conventional luminaires. For the transfer of heat, a larger surface is needed. With many LED manufacturers, this leads to more mass. As a result, it can be a difficult task to re-use existing masts,” Michel Van Dooren, AAA-LUX, explains. In 2009, AAA-LUX was the first in the world to come up with a real retrofit solution. To date, they are still the only European manufacturer with such a solution. “Because of this, the existing masts can be used in 90% of all cases. This makes a huge difference in investment, by which LED lighting becomes accessible for more clubs,” Van Dooren concludes.

LED lighting offers interesting advantages
The Berger Feld training center in Gelsenkrichen Germany, owned by the local Bundesliga club named after the Schalke district, shows why LED lighting is so effective and interesting. There are 10 training fields and besides that, the former Volksparkstadium is rebuilt to a compact stadium for Young-Schalke. Because of the uplift renovation of the whole training center there was a clear demand for better lighting. Moreover, the “flicker free”-properties of LED result in better camera recordings. Training sessions are recorded for analysis purposes at many professional football clubs. “The German club approached us to develop this project. We took the existing infrastructure, that was designed for conventional light, and used it for LED lighting. Furthermore, the German club can dim the light thanks to the wireless operating system and always select the desired level of lighting. This results in a considerable reduction of energy consumption,” Michel van Dooren, AAA-LUX, says.

LED lighting is a smart and sustainable solution
These specific design choices madee by AAA-LUX, make LED lighting accessible for more professional and non-professional sports clubs. And that is a good development. LED lighting does not only produce more and better light for players, audience and television registration, it also contributes to reducing the carbon footprint helping to protect our beautiful planet.