LIGHTING of Qatar World Cup

As a quadrennial sporting event, every World Cup creates a buzz around the world, and this year's World Cup, which has been dubbed "the most expensive in history," has attracted much attention. According to the statistics of CNN and Forbes, the total cost of the Qatar World Cup is 220 billion dollars, while the combined cost of all the past World Cups is only 44.3 billion dollars.

As an important venue for the World Cup, the quality of football stadiums not only affects the performance of athletes, but also affects the experience of fans on site or online.It is believed that many lighting people will be exposed to the DNA of the Qatar World Cup stadium, which is built at a huge amount of money. So, let's take this opportunity to talk about the evaluation criteria of an excellent lighting system for football stadiums, how to light, what kind of lights to use in football stadiums and so on.

▲Night view of the Lussel Stadium

When it comes to lighting design, we always emphasize user based benchmarks, which are set by the user's experience.Therefore, the quality of lighting in football stadiums depends on the athletes and referees, the audience on site and the audience in front of the TV in turn. From a professional point of view, it can be divided into illuminance level, illuminance uniformity and glare control degree.

01 How to judge the level of lighting in football stadiums?

An excellent football field lighting system must realize multiple functions at the same time, which is also an important criterion to judge the lighting level of a football field.

First, you must provide good lighting conditions for players to show off their skills.

Second, the judges can make clear judgments;

Thirdly, the live audience from all angles can clearly see the live game and live big screen reports;

Fourth, it must meet the requirements of field recording and television retransmission equipment;

Finally, the required parameters must be adhered to, the economic needs of light and light pollution must be considered. In order to meet the above requirements, we need to pay attention to the following points.

▲ Inside the AI Janoub Stadium

First of all, we must make it clear that in a football stadium, the level of lighting for players is not the same as that for spectators.

The visibility of athletes is related to both vertical and horizontal illuminance.Vertical illuminance depends on the direction and position of the floodlight projection.

Since horizontal illuminance is easy to calculate and measure, the recommended illuminance value refers to horizontal illuminance.

The number of spectators varies greatly due to different venues, and the viewing distance is related to the capacity of the arena, so the illumination required by the arena will increase with the increase of the stadium as required.

▲The Stade de Lussel

Secondly, in order to provide a better visual effect, the illumination uniformity, brightness uniformity and stereoscopic (horizontal and vertical relative imaging evaluation) of football stadium lighting are crucial.

The horizontal/vertical illuminance standard grid is a "test paper" used to accurately measure and calculate the lighting level of football fields.

▲ Left picture, horizontal illumination standard calculation grid;Right, vertical illuminance standard grid.

The poor lighting glare of football field will cause visual discomfort to the players and also reduce the quality of the video broadcast. In order to avoid glare, the setting of the light Angle of the field plays a decisive role.??

Improper use of floodlights can cause interference to players, especially goalkeepers, so lighting design must be strictly based on standards.??

The distribution of light has to take into account the positioning of the camera to ensure that good images of the game are delivered to the audience.For example, the vertical illumination of the camera must meet the vertical illumination requirements of all cameras in the field.

▲ Blue is the regular fixed event camera, orange is the dynamic camera

▲ Schematic diagram of lighting at different camera positions. The figure is from the Research Center of Light Environment and Lighting

02 How do you put lights on a football field?

▲Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup Group stage: Qatar VS Ecuador

Generally speaking, the cloth lights of the football field are arranged around the ceiling of the grandstand (namely, the so-called linear light belt cloth lights, but the premise is the stadium with spectator stands) and installed on the columns around the stadium in groups, and then the number and power of the lamps are adjusted according to the needs of the field grade (the so-called four-corner arrangement, multi-bar arrangement).

▲ Multi-bar layout

As the current retransmission is "high-definition TV retransmission HDTV", the vertical illumination requirement is extremely high: the main camera direction on the rostrum.

▲ Inside the AI Janoub Stadium

In order to protect players' eyes from being blinded by the lob, it is also stipulated that lights are not allowed in the extension line and behind the goal, i.e., the "red X" area below.(Even if there are lights, they should only be turned on for other applications such as performances, not football matches!)

Therefore, it is necessary to install lights in the surrounding areas, and a few areas can not be installed......As a result, a large number of lights were concentrated at the four corners of the site.In this way, it became a modified version of the "four towers".

03 What kind of lights do football stadiums use?

Metal halide lamps, high pressure sodium lamps and halogen tungsten lamps can be used as lighting sources in football fields. The selection of light sources is determined by the time of use per year, initial project investment and maintenance cost.Usually 1000W and 1500W gold halogen lamps are used. The number and Angle of lamps can be adjusted by installing different position groups to meet the design standards.

▲ Different modules of the vertical rod and cloth lamp combination

▲ A typical football stadium column lighting group

After reading this article, check out the Qatar World Cup stadium lighting system during the match right now!