BROOKINGS, SD — Daktronics co-founders Al Kurtenbach and Duane Sander, along with the Kurtenbach’s son (and current CEO) Reece Kurtenbach, may be more accustomed to working in behind-the-scenes roles. But all three were front and center on CBS News Sunday Morning on Feb. 1, 2015. That’s when the 7.5 minute TV report detailed how their company has grown from humble beginnings in a town four hours away from the nearest NFL franchise to a video powerhouse providing football fans with some of the biggest stadium screens ever produced.
Daktronics, which was also profiled by The New York Times last summer, welcomed CBS national correspondent Lee Cowan and a film crew to their headquarters in Brookings for the segment, which was taped last November and aired Feb. 1 during the show’s 8 a.m. broadcast. (The segment also appears online; to view it go to www.plsn.me/daktronics-cbs.)
The news segment noted that Daktronics was the company behind not only the 168-by-58-foot (WxH) 13HD video display at the south end zone for the Arizona Cardinal’s University of Phoenix Stadium, the site of NBC’s Super Bowl XLIX broadcast, but the dual end zone displays that were installed at EverBank Field, home to the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team and unveiled last summer.
Each of those 13HD screens measure 362 by 60 feet (WxH) — occupying more than 21,700 square feet, and each one gives Daktronics bragging rights to the largest NFL screen produced. Each also allow for three full-size HD windows to display scores and stats along with the action on the field.
The CBS report noted that each of the screens also represented a $9 million portion of the $63 million spent by Jaguars owner Shahid Khan and the city of Jacksonville on the stadium’s improvements for the 2014 football season.
But even the Jacksonville screens will be dwarfed by the circular LED “halo” display planned to line a retractable roof in the $1.4 billion new home for the Atlanta Falcons, currently under construction near Atlanta’s Georgia Dome and due to open in 2017. That screen is expected to be 58 feet high by 1,100 feet in circumference, adding up to a total of about 63,800 square feet of LED video display space.
