Signage and Graphics for Sports Arenas and Teams

For any sports venue or team, you’ll need to have custom signs and graphics that make your organization stand out from the competition and keep fans coming back to see their favorite team play.

Why Sports Signage and Graphics Are Important

When fans come to see their favorite sporting event, they are not just coming to see the game — they are coming to have an experience. Your arena’s look and design will impact that experience. One significant way to make a good impression on your fans is through attractive signs and graphics at your stadium.

With custom sports signs and graphics, you can create an atmosphere inside your arena or stadium synonymous with your team. Build an atmosphere that you feel proud to stand behind.

How to Make Your Graphics Successful

To ensure that your branding graphics and signage make waves with your audience, you should consider the following advice as you market, advertise and mobilize your message.

1. Market Your Team’s Branding

You want your organization’s graphics to appeal to your target audience. By using window graphics, door wraps, and banners that reflect your team’s main colors and image, you will strengthen your fan’s identification with the team and leave a long-lasting impression.

2. Advertise and Promote Additional Products and Services

On top of appealing graphics adding to your team’s brand, you can use them in the sports stadium to point fans to season ticket sales and areas where they can purchase memorabilia and snacks. Strategically placed graphics on flags, banners or digital signage will catch your fans’ eyes and increase sales and revenue for your event.

3. Mobilize Your Message

Don’t just think about stadium signs and graphics. Expand your reach and promote your message through signs on external structures around your local area for your next upcoming event. External structures will generate pride in fans who see them, and create more interest to purchase tickets to see a game. Vehicle wraps can add true mobility to your message and spread your message across the city.

Types of Custom Signs and Graphics for Sports Venues and Teams

Looking for a place to start improving your graphics and signs at your arena or stadium? Look no further. We’ve put together four of the main types of signs and graphics that teams use to customize the look of their team and arena.

1. Environmental Graphics

At any arena, fans want to feel pride in their team and feel that they are in a place like no other. With environmental graphics, you can make your stadium signage unique by creating and defining a fan’s experience in the space.

Along with being an attractive aesthetic choice, environmental graphics can serve a functional role as they help people find their seat or the closest concession booth.

What Are Environmental Graphics?

Environmental graphics are how a stadium crafts its brand and makes the venue pop. Signage, pictograms, fonts, colors and digital technology all play a role in crafting an environment’s graphic design.

Signage is crucial to any sports arena as it serves four primary roles:

Informational: Labeling section numbers, for example
Directional: Directing fans around the arena, such as to restrooms or concessions
Identificational: Identifying place, such as the ticket booth
Warning: Letting fans know which areas are for employees only, for instance

Incorporating pictograms to your signs, such as using a wheelchair to indicate handicap accessibility, can make them even more helpful to everyone. If you want people to know where to go and what they are looking at, signs should be on the top of your list.

Fonts and colors are other main elements of environmental graphic design as they set the tone for your organization and help you brand your team.

How to Use Environmental Graphics

From wayfinding and identity graphics to branded environments and installations, you can apply environmental graphics in several ways:

Wayfinding: Environmental graphics helps fans get from Point A to Point B in the most direct way possible. It can also be used to help orient people to their environment, such as a marker that shows where they are in the stadium on a stationary, display map. This use of environmental graphics is so popular that it receives its very own section in this article.
Identity graphics: These graphics define the arena through team colors, images of players and logos. With the right choices, your identity graphics can instill pride in audience members, give your arena a personality and make people feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves.
Branded environments: Environmental graphic designs can also help create a space that is cohesive to your brand identity and the sponsors that support you. Branding the environment is a holistic effort that incorporates sponsors’ logos and details into your arena’s unique look. A well-branded environment will have the sponsor’s graphics complementing the team’s identity graphics throughout, without one overshadowing or clashing with the other.
Installations: Installations are often associated with public art installations and artwork found at parks or offices. Your arena can use these artistic displays to set the mood for your stadium. For instance, in one section you could memorialize legendary players with a statue of them to create a feeling of reverence while in another area of the arena, you could set up an installation that gets fans excited for the game they are about to see with a screen showing all of the season’s highlights, for example.

With so many ways you can apply environmental graphics, you have plenty of options to choose from to make your sporting event a special part of your city.

2. Directional and Wayfinding Signage

Mentioned previously, directional and wayfinding signage relates to the way an organization provides information about its environment to people. In a stadium, you can use signs to give direction, provide information, name sections of the arena and designate particular areas.

Application of these signs will improve user experience and better organize your event. For example, a common application of these signs is to show a crowd where to walk to get to a specific area by using a sign with prominent arrows and clear language to direct them in the way they need to go. Additionally, a directional sign could clearly mark smoking areas, different parking lots, bathroom locations, places to buy merchandise and entryways.

Benefits of Wayfinding Signage

There are many benefits to directional and wayfinding signage. Below you’ll find some of the best reasons to implement them:

Make your fans feel welcome: A directional sign can help fans know that they are headed in the right direction and make them feel like they are a meaningful part of a team’s success. Fan appreciation signs that designate entrances into the arena will make the crowd feel appreciated and excited to see a game live.
Guide your fans: When you go to a sporting event, you don’t want to have to worry about where you need to park your car, store your coat, locate the restroom or find refreshments. The best arenas employ wayfinding signs that help fans navigate through the stadium with ease.
Put the crowd’s mind at ease: Along with giving your fans useful information about how to navigate the environment, directional signs will give fans a pleasant customer experience. With signs that help customers find information quickly, you will reassure them that they are on the right path and let them focus on what matters most — having fun at the game.
Brand your arena: Directional and wayfinding signs provide fans value, and they help to bring in new fans. Exterior signs that direct fans to the arena also are visible to other people passing by the arena, making them aware of your team.

3. Digital Signage

To really improve a fan’s experience, consider using digital signs throughout your stadium or arena. Digital signage is a modern way to advertise your team and improve their experiences. Their customizability makes them a popular choice among many sports organizations, as a team’s record, players and news continuously change.

A digital sign can be used to draw fans in with flashy advertisements that upsell them with new memorabilia, ticket packages, and other special offers. They can also display highlight reels and other crowd-pleasing videos to get fans excited as soon as they enter the arena.

A digital sign offers an alternative to traditional signage. It comes with many benefits where traditional signage simply can’t. It’s no wonder that digital signage is continuing to grow at a fast rate, with the predicted market size expected to reach almost $32 billion by 2025.

Though traditional signs are still important, digital signs make an excellent addition to your arena or stadium. If you’re interested in including digital signs, we’ve outlined the many benefits below:

Lower cost to advertise: Digital signage is an excellent option as it cuts advertising expenses by limiting the number of times you would need to pay for printing and shipping. Instead of having to manually change out any traditional advertisements and pay for the new material, a digital sign only needs to have a new image uploaded, and it’s good to go. While the cost for a digital sign is typically higher than a traditional sign, its long-term savings make up for that initial investment.

More ad revenue: A digital sign has the option to cycle through different ads or, more easily, update the space to fit another ad. As such, it makes it possible for you to sell more advertising space to sponsors and boost your own revenue.
Lower cost to fix mistakes: Even if you put out all the stops, mistakes are bound to happen on your signs. With traditional signs, having to reorder and reship new, updated materials will waste time and money. A digital sign reduces those costs by making it easy to fix and no extra cost to you.
Fast creation and changes: Digital signs can be created quickly without waiting for materials to be put together and then shipped to you. Along with this, you can update your sign quickly to meet any needed changes to your messaging.
No limits to content: A digital sign can rotate through messages, meaning that your arena can consistently make an impactful brand impression on any fans attending the game. For instance, a sign that displays multiple messages could make sure to have each message target a different segment of your fan base, which will make for a better experience for all of your fans.

4. Floor Graphics

If you want to make your athletic field or court standout, a custom floor graphic is what you need. With fans staring at the game for the majority of their time in the arena, a floor graphics such as those used in the center of basketball courts can foster a stronger team identity and act as a visually appealing accent to the court.

Floor graphics can accent an indoor court, but they can also be used outdoors for field signage, such as in the end zone of a football field. Additionally, smaller floor graphics can be used throughout your team’s arena to give it a unique feel. Some of the benefits of floor graphics include:

Branding: The open space of floors are often left untapped by organizations but can offer an effective venue for branding. Instead of the typical marketing messages displayed on walls or stands, a floor complete with graphics builds an ambiance that feels fresh, professional and full of your team’s personality.
Direct traffic: A floor with arrows or other directional graphics can show fans where they need to talk to get to their desired destination.
Add an artistic touch: On top of being functional and offering opportunities for branding, floor graphics make an artistic statement. Show off why your team is unique through custom-made designs that appeal to your fanbase.

Looking for Custom Sports Graphics for Your Stadium?

Custom sports signs and graphics are critical to a fan’s experience at an arena or stadium. If you’re looking to add some great-looking sports signage to your arena, SpeedPro wants to help. We’re the only nationwide network of visual communication studios focused on large-format graphics, and we’ll help you find the best solution for your organization.

Our franchises make it their focus to provide high-quality products, friendly customer service and unique designs. Find and contact your local studio today. Our representative will be happy to help you find the perfect graphics for your team.