When the Houston Rockets host their regular-season home opener on Friday, Oct. 22 versus Oklahoma City, fans at Toyota Center and those watching on television might notice a different look for the game’s presentation. If so, it’s very much by design.
For the first time since the arena’s official opening in 2003, the Rockets completed a major lighting upgrade during the 2021 NBA offseason. With owner Tilman Fertitta greenlighting the investment, Houston joined Toronto as the only two NBA teams to install the new Ephesus Lumadapt 8 system from Cooper Lighting Solutions.
“The Fertittas always want to make sure that they’re delivering the best experience for our fans,” said Gretchen Sheirr, president of business operations. Sheirr spoke to Rockets Wire in a one-on-one interview on Tuesday to help spotlight the changes.
“They’ve been traveling around different teams and different arenas during the course of their ownership, and they definitely noticed a change in the lighting,” Sheirr said. “The sports lighting and the LED (light-emitting diode) lighting has always been important that we get installed in Toyota Center, to have more flexibility during our [player] introductions, game presentations, halftimes, and for special events.”
When Toyota Center opened nearly 20 years ago, the arena’s lighting system consisted of approximately 350 metal-halide fixtures, each with shutters to enable a manual switch from on to off (or vice versa). With the switch to Lumadapt 8, the Rockets were able to reduce their overall fixtures from 350 to less than 200, thanks to the superior quality of each light. In turn, this also reduces the arena’s overall power demand.
“There are fewer fixtures and fewer power (demands), and brighter quality and better TV lighting,” said Doug Hall, general manager of Toyota Center. “The new system is also more customizable, and it gives us the ability to tune and to perfect. Because they’re LED, you can adjust an individual light based on whatever you want to do. It’s a newer technology.”
The new system includes a standard panel, but there’s also a cloud-based option to control it remotely. Features include integrated RGBA (red-green-blue-alpha) color flooding; color temperature tuning; and beam tuning, all while capturing health and performance data. For arena operators, it allows Toyota Center to gradually fade to black or softly turn the lights back on, as opposed to a sudden jolt.
“It’s gives us a lot of flexibility to brighten up the entire bowl, bring the lights down, change the colors, or even do a paporazzi effect,” Sheirr said.
For the first time since Toyota Center opened in 2003, the #Rockets completed a major lighting upgrade this offseason.
They’re now one of only two NBA teams (with Toronto) to install the @EphesusLighting Lumadapt 8. Here’s a sampling of what they can now do at games this season: pic.twitter.com/EVVwbwVEvQ
— Ben DuBose (@BenDuBose) October 19, 2021
Because each independent fixture of the system is tunable, any issue discovered via data monitoring can be fixed independently to ensure the light still reaches the 4,400 degrees Kelvin threshold, which the NBA sets as a criteria for many of its high-profile broadcasts.
Ultimately, Hall expects the court’s lighting — and any reflections, or lack thereof — to look “much cleaner and sharper” than in previous years. The system also allows the lighting to gradually fade out over the seats, which creates a spotlight effect on the court itself and could result in some of the seating areas appearing slightly more dim.
“When the lights are on, and they’re playing, the CRI (color rendering index) rating is way higher than the technology that was out 20 years ago,” Hall said on Tuesday.
While the lighting is likely the most noticeable change, since it will likely show up on television, the Rockets are also rolling out other upgrades in the 2021-22 season. By upgrading the arena’s “point of sale” software system, the goal is to give in-arena fans a more efficient experience.
“The point of sale system is what runs all of our concessions back of house, so that gives us flexibility in changing menu items, adjusting prices, and maybe looking at some all-inclusive items or being able to discount certain items at certain points of the game,” Sheirr said. “You’ll be able to have an expanded menu to be able to order from your phone, through a mobile wallet. These are all things that were available in small doses leading into COVID, but with a full system upgrade, fans are going to have a lot more flexibility in their food and beverage offerings.”
The Rockets also completed an upgrade to their building automation system, which allows engineers to control the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system remotely from a mobile device, as opposed to having to be in a control room. In the notoriously humid climate of Houston, for example, this allows engineers to more easily monitor the court’s humidity levels and ensure that it is in compliance with NBA rules.
Many of these projects date back to the NBA’s COVID-19 hiatus in March 2020, which gave teams the opportunity to think about bigger-picture needs. “COVID was not a fun time for anyone, but it did provide a little bit of extra downtime in the arena to be able to use the time to invest in these types of projects,” Sheirr said. “At a time when we unfortunately had to push pause on hosting live events, we were able to take the time and the energy and the financial investment, thanks to the Fertittas, to make sure that when people came back into Toyota Center, they were coming back to a first-class facility.”
AT&T also completed a mobile upgrade around this time, as well. “This is now a 5G facility,” Sheirr noted. “Everyone’s phones and mobile devices should work must faster than they have before.”
While fans were allowed at Toyota Center in the 2020-21 NBA season, crowds were small and socially distanced, with less than 3,000 fans typically scattered throughout the arena.
With full-capacity crowds back in 2021-22, the Rockets are well aware that many fans are returning to the arena for the first time in at least 19 months. When they do, the team is hopeful that its wave of investment creates an even better experience than what they left.
Sheirr concludes: “Our goal is that fans don’t really notice it, except they walk away going, ‘That was a really fun, cool, faster experience.’ We want to make sure that everything that we’re doing is first class.”
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