CALM BEFORE THE STORM: Steve Ballmer and Gillian Zucker unveil Intuit Dome’s new Daktronics ‘Halo’ video board. (James Zoltak/VN Staff)

Daktronics masterpiece is crowning feature of $2 billion arena

INGLEWOOD, California — Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer personally unveiled the one-of-a-kind Daktronics halo board that sits above the seating bowl in the $2 billion Intuit Dome, due to open in August for concerts and in the fall for NBA basketball.

Flanked by Gillian Zucker, the Clippers one-time president of business operations and now CEO of Halo Sports and Entertainment, created to run the Clippers, the Intuit Dome and the Kia Forum. Ballmer didn’t contain his enthusiasm for what is the crowning piece of his new pro “basketball mecca.”

The two-sided board, reminiscent of the Samsung halo board that rings SoFi stadium in nearby Hollywood Park, spans nearly an acre and its lowest tech feqture may be the T-shirt cannon mounted on top.

The board can show instant replays in detail, present stats graphically and map game flow — all at once.

Its various modes include Steve Cam, featuring, — you guessed it—  No.1 Clippers fan Ballmer himself.

Zucker and Ballmer recalled a 2019 meeting with AECOM Senior Vice President Bill Hanway, the lead designer, who was on hand for the board unveiling.

“Bill took us through a presentation and we were looking at scoreboards from around the league,” Ballmer said. “Pretty amazing. I’d seen most of them, being in buildings, taking a look, and they’re good. But as I thought about what I wanted, I just gave my opinion. I like big screens. So you can see a lot of information that’s important to me. I don’t like those little corner boards you sometimes have to look at particularly if you’re sitting courtside in the most expensive seats. I wanted boards that are crisp.When you look at the old boards, and you see those old big fat pixels that are hard to look at, I didn’t want any of that. I really wanted also, because of the size, let’s figure out how to get stats out there. Let’s figure out how to engage the fan. That’s what I wanted.”

Zucker said the options showed in the meeting were not what Ballmer wanted.

“And then Bill showed you the first rendering of the halo,” she said.

Ballmer asked him “to make it bigger.”

“I wanted to make sure the thing was totally functional, that it really added to the game that it was not just, you know, kind of like an art object, if you will,” he said.

“Now, how did I think about it? I’m a software guy,” Ballmer continued. “There’s just a big old big old screen and I wanted to have the right software to really program it. So, no matter where you’re sitting, you can see what you want to see, see what you need to see. Yeah, it’s a big old piece of hardware, but to get it to really zip for us, we had to treat it like a place to program software make it come alive.”

Zucker said programming the board is no simple task and Bruno Mars’ team is at work developing content for his two arena-opening concerts

“For the screen itself, we went to South Dakota, where Daktronics sets the standard. They shipped every single piece of this board across the country on schedule,” she said. “We tapped PIXMA, the longtime partner that has again raised the bar. Finally, you pulled in Spinifex, an award-winning creative studio recognized as a global leader in immersive experiences, dazzling audiences at Disney universal and the Olympics. There are many many benefits to being in the entertainment capital of the world. Spinifex has handled visual effects for Lucasfilm, Marvel, Pixar, 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks.

Ballmer said he didn’t want 16 duplicating screens.

“Can you imagine, and people do do this, you just had like a TV screen next to a TV screen next to TV screen? It’d be like a bunch of mounted displays. Like my grandpa has taken his old Zenith and mounted it on the wall,” Ballmer said. “Wwe didn’t want that. We had to think about it as one holistic thing.”

What he ended up with is the largest 4kK full UHD double-sided LED board ever built.

“It’s more than 233 million pixels,” Zucker said. “That’s more than six pixels for every California residents. Rolled down flat, it’s three times the life of the Hollywood sign. It weighs over 519,000 pounds.”

“We don’t want to distract,” Ballmer said. “When game action’s on we want you mostly much drilled in watching the game.”