Colossus TV may be the world’s largest outdoor, center-hung, 4-side video display, but come tonight, it’s also going to provide the ultimate viewing experience for fans attending the NCAA National Championship between Villanova and Michigan.
Fans at the Alamodome in San Antonio will see a version of Colossus TV hanging from the ceiling, but the rest of the monstrous structure is being used at the scoring tables, music festivals, fan areas and at other sporting events, like the recent Women’s Final Four scorer’s table in Columbus, Ohio.
The center hung structure for the tournament will feature an LED top ribbon that is 6 feet tall. The structure features eight total sides, four video screens that are 18 feet tall by 32 feet wide and four statistics screens that are 18 feet tall by 24 video wide.
In addition, panels from Colossus TV were used in the Sunset Station Turner Sports Plaza as well as the March Madness Music Festival, the largest three-day free concert in the country, featuring Jason Aldean, Imagine Dragons and Maroon 5. Five massive screens were erected for the main concert stage.
Overall, there are 3,946 feet of LED between 1,866 panels and a total of 35,120,099 total pixels from Colossus being used during the events.
“The power and intensity of Colossus TV is a must see for any sports fan,” said Jerry Caldwell, executive vice president and general manager of Bristol Motor Speedway. “The NCAA National Championship game will give the thousands of fans in attendance and millions of fans watching around the world a state-of-the-art look at Colossus.”
Colossus, completed prior to the 2016 Food City 500, has the highest viewing quality of any permanent outdoor stadium display in the world, featuring 2880 x 1350 lines of resolution. Compare that to the average home HD TV screen at 1920 x 1080. It currently hosts nearly 54 million LEDs and 18 million pixels, which are grouped tighter than the large-scale outdoor displays in Times Square.
The actual structure is even more impressive. Each LED screen at BMS is 29.5 feet tall and 62.9 feet wide, equaling approximately 1,145 50-inch televisions. The unit also features a lower viewing ring that measures five feet 11 inches high by almost 189 feet in circumference. The entire structure weighs nearly 700 tons and includes suspension cables that are larger than the vertical cables supporting the Golden Gate Bridge.
In addition to being present at the NCAA Final Four, sections of Colossus have also been used for the Ryder Cup and Austin City Limits Music Festival.
Race fans need not worry as Colossus TV will return to The Last Great Colosseum for re-installation just in time for the Food City 500, April 13-15. To purchase tickets to the Food City 500, please call 423-BRISTOL or buy them online at www.BRISTOLTIX.com.
BMS PR/Photo The center-hung display went up prior to the NCAA Final Four
