Ice Hockey Digital Advertising

Ice rink dynamic advertising is now proving to be a winner for several installations in America and Canada; digital signage systems is now being installed in several ice rinks due to the lower price as well as their speedy return on investment.

First let us look at the design of the ice rink so we can fully fully grasp what the electronic marketing hardware has to contend with.

Ice Rink.

The word link converts in Scottish to “course”, this is an area that was and still is to this day used for the Scottish common winter sport of curling

An inside ice rink.

These indoor ice rinks are made in layers, a concrete base is laid, with a series of pipes that has a chilled fluid inside, the chilled fluid is either be brine or a water mixture including antifreeze and this is embedded in the concrete. When water is sprayed on top of the cement it freezes due to the ultra low temperatures.

Due to the rink being built of layers a few centimetres thick, it is required to resurface the rink with more ice occasionally, as the ice rink heats up and with the wear of skaters and ice hockey teams sawing into the ice.

A siton machine identified as a Zamboni is used to resurface the ice and typically comes out and does its job in the breaks.

With most ice hockey rinks being a regular 50 degrees Fahrenheit or 10 degrees Celsius this can cause some difficulties with the electronics deployed. Think about using a household TV in this extreme setting what would transpire? Well over a short time period you would find that the monitor would fail due to the heat in the screen causing condensation to form on internal parts and then rusting them.

Digital signage in an ice hockey rink.

Now here the investment in the electronic signage hardware is essential, as you don’t want the investors asking their decision to deploy a digital signage solution that fails.

One confident way to fortify the hardware is to mount an LCD enclosure, these are a steel LCD enclosure that the electronics will fit into and can be placed from ceiling mounts and from the walls, ideal for promoting drinks and fast food for the break.

The LCD enclosure is fixed with a special cooling and heating method that is thermostatically controlled and can be fine-tuned, so when the temperature falls to below 65 degrees Fahrenheit, the heater starts to work and warms the internal computer hardware in the housing, then when the heat soars past the preset temperature the heater switches off, this constant monitoring of the internal heat is critical to main the integrity of the internal equipment.

Without any protective casing the digital marketing solution will have to be able to deal in an environment that almost none of the normal devices can work in.

Once the hardware is in a safe environment the rink can gain from broadcasting news mixed with adverts, these advertisements can include the rink shop, the next high profile match or even the meal deal at the quick serve eaterie.

The writer is a technical writer in the field of outdoor digital signage as well as manufacturing a range of digital signage enclosures