After athletic arena life safety obligations are met (governed legally by NFPA 70, NFPA 101, NFPA 110, the International Building Code and possibly other state adaptations of those consensus documents incorporated by reference into public safety law) business objective standards come into play. The illumination of the competitive venue itself figures heavily into the quality of digital media visual experience and value.
For almost all athletic facilities, the consensus documents of the Illumination Engineering Society[1], the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers[2][3] provide the first principles for life safety. For business purposes, the documents distributed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association inform the standard of care for individual athletic arenas so that swiftly moving media production companies have some consistency in power sources and illumination as they move from site to site. Sometimes concepts to meet both life safety and business objectives merge.
The NCAA is not a consensus standard developer but it does have a suite of recommended practice documents for lighting the venues for typical competition and competition that is televised.
It welcomes feedback from subject matter experts and front line facility managers.
Our own monthly walk-through of athletic and recreation facility codes and standards workgroup meets monthly. See our CALENDAR for the next online Athletics & Recreation facilities; open to everyone.
Issue: [15-138]*
Category: Electrical, Architectural, Arts & Entertainment Facilities, Athletics
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Jim Harvey, Jack Janveja
92,003 in attendance.@HuskerVB breaks the world record for the largest crowd ever at a women’s sporting event 👏 @espnW | #ThatsaW pic.twitter.com/ChyhUCvaAZ
— ESPN (@espn) August 31, 2023
This may be the rally of the week and we haven't even made it to Friday yet!#NCAAVB #SCtop10
(via @SFA_Volleyball)pic.twitter.com/2h6OvVB1ty— NCAA Women's Volleyball (@NCAAVolleyball) November 2, 2018
[1] Illumination Engineering Handbook
[2] IEEE 3001.9 Recommended Practice for Design of Power Systems for Supplying Lighting Systems for Commercial & Industrial Facilities
[3] IEEE 3006.1 Power System Reliability
* Issue numbering before 2016 dates back to the original University of Michigan codes and standards advocacy enterprise