The Minicom Interview

Today the Minicom Interview speaks to Mark Steinkamp from Daktronics - giants in the digital signage industry. With a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Masters degree in Business Administration, Mark has worked at Daktronics for the last 24 years.

Step foot into any professional or college arena/stadium in the world but especially the USA and chances are you are looking at one form of Daktronics product or another. They design, manufacture, sell and service video board, scoreboards, digital billboards and other related products. The South Dakota company (which ironically doesn't have a local professional team of its own) is best known for its electronic LED displays at major sporting venues.

Daktronics' numbers are very impressive.
*Daktronics has scoring and/or display equipment at 26 of 30 MLB facilities.
*Daktronics will have Integrated Super Systems at 18 of 30 MLB Facilities in 2009.
*Daktronics has scoring and/or display equipment at 18 of 29 NBA facilities.
*Daktronics has integrated super systems at 9 of 29 NBA facilities.
*Daktronics has scoring and/or display equipment at 21 of 30 NHL facilities.
*Daktronics has integrated super systems at 12 of 30 NHL facilities.


Minicom Blog: Thanks for joining us Mark.
Mark Steinkamp: My pleasure.

MB: Have long have you been at Daktronics?
MS: I joined in 1984 and I was designing scoreboards literally on a drawing board. Back then our sales were 7 million dollars and we had 100 employees. Now I'm in charge of marketing and PR sales support for our Large Sports Venues group. Today the company has 3200 employees; our annual sales total $500 million.

MB: You seem to right across the industry.
MS: We have a number of different divisions (Sports, Commercial, Transportation, Mobile and Modular). In the transportation market, for instance, we have electronic displays designed specifically to help direct traffic. Our commercial market is growing with the start of the change over to digital billboards. Sport is probably where we are best known. For instance, we are at 26 of the 30 major league ballparks. Our most recent installations are at the stadiums of the Kansas City Royals and Arizona Diamondbacks but we will also be present at the new Yankee Stadium and Citi Field (New York Mets). We use LED technology and not LCD or plasma. For those who don't know what LED technology is – it’s the little light bulbs you have in your computer or appliances showing that it's turned on. They are quite small and thus you can get a good resolution with them.

MB: Are the screens different at all between the different sports?
MS: Mainly in terms of indoor versus outdoor. The indoor ones don't have to be as bright nor do they have to be waterproof or withstand the other elements.

MB: What trends do you notice with the screens?
MS: Getting bigger. Higher resolution. The Kansas City screen is 85 feet in width by 105 feet high and is the world's largest high definition LED video display. You are seeing more unique shapes, more custom shapes and different configurations. The KC one can show two full screen 720 x 1280 images on top of each other simultaneously. There is also an increased application of technology with the outfield walls in baseball starting to become digital. All this is leading to a more interactive experience for the fans. There are more applications with digital technology in places at the expense of static advertising/messaging. The size of the screens may be going up but over the past decade, the costs have come down as LED production has been ramped up to meet greater demand. So we are seeing larger displays, in different applications, and also in smaller venues where it would not have been possible ten years ago.

MB: Do you guys also look after the content?
MS: Yes we have our own content division. It's called Keyframe Creative Agency. We just don’t do the screens but provide all of the different pieces and services such as sound systems and game day services. Many of our major league and minor league baseball customers have the scoreboards linked with the primary professional baseball databases so all of the statistics are up to date. We are a one stop solution.

MB: Was it hard for you to crack the industry?
MS: WWe didn't do so with large screen video until 1997. We had always been a player in what readers might call alpha-numeric scoreboards. Before then we didn't have a large screen video product but in the mid 90s LED technology improved and you had LEDs available in the three primary colors (RGB) which allowed the screens to become a reality. We installed at three colleges in the fall of 1997 and things got rolling from there.


MB: The screens are also used when the venue isn't being used for sport but something else like a concert?
MS: Yes. An excellent example is the new Prudential Center in Newark which has a lot of non-sporting entertainment events. They have 100 screens around the concourse as well as the main scoreboard inside the arena, ribbon boards and a marquee. The entire venue can be branded for nearly any event. The screens in general help get the most out of the investment. There is interactivity with the fans and also for the sponsors.


MB: Thanks for your time Mark.
MS: Thank you for having me.