University of Illinois Plans to Build College Sports' Largest Digital Scoreboard -- Campus Technology

AV Gear

University of Illinois Plans to Build College Sports' Largest Digital Scoreboard

By Matt Jones
01/16/26

Key Takeaways

The University of Illinois is upgrading Gies Memorial Stadium with the largest digital scoreboard in college sports, featuring a 69-by-250-foot LED display set to debut before the 2026 football season.
The new Daktronics-built scoreboard will deliver nearly double the resolution of the existing display and be supported by comprehensive audio, broadcast, and infrastructure upgrades led by Anthony James Partners.
Additional stadium enhancements include 16 more LED displays throughout the venue, reinforcing a broader push to modernize the fan experience with next-generation visual and audio technology.

The University of Illinois in Champaign, IL, recently announced a series of upgrades to its Gies Memorial Stadium that will include the largest scoreboard in college sports. The university is collaborating with Anthony James Partners (AJP) for the project, which will include planning design, support, and construction services. The project also entails stadium audio and broadcast system upgrades.

The new scoreboard will measure 69 feet high by 250 feet wide, measuring in at more than 17,300 square feet of LED surface. Its 10mm pixel pitch and 16.1-million total pixels create a 195% increase in resolution from the existing technology. Completion is scheduled before the beginning of the 2026 college football season. According to the news release, it will replace the stadium's existing South End Zone display.

"This project exemplifies AJP's commitment to combining innovative design with next-generation audio technology," said Jack Covert, Anthony James Partners' vice president of audio engineering. "Gies Memorial Stadium's new system will deliver the clarity, power, and excitement today's fans expect from a premier college football venue."

Stadium-wide improvements also include 16 additional LED displays totaling more than 26,700 square feet scattered across the stadium. Alongside the upgraded technology, the stadium will undergo structural and infrastructure coordination to accommodate the main scoreboard's size.

The university chose Daktronics to provide the LED display after a "competitive procurement process," the news release reported.

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

E-Mail this page

Printable Format

Featured

Why Cross-Skilling Is the Smartest Investment a Campus IT Team Can Make

Higher education IT teams are being asked to keep pace with AI, cloud, and cybersecurity on flat budgets, and hiring a specialist for every new need can no longer keep up. Building adjacent skills across the people already on staff creates more agile, resilient teams that move faster and retain talent without adding headcount. Pluralsight makes the strategy work through skill assessments, tailored learning paths, hands-on labs and sandboxes, and microlearning that fits into the flow of work.
Survey: Organizations Moving AI Workloads Away from Public Cloud

A new Cloudera survey of 1,500 enterprise technology leaders found widespread AI-driven architecture changes, with governance problems, rising infrastructure costs, and workload placement pushing organizations toward more hybrid approaches.
Want to Close the Skills Gap? Bring Learning Closer to Work

If the jobs of the future require different skills, creating those jobs is only half the equation. We also need realistic pathways for people to reach them.
Phishing Report Emphasizes Importance of Building a Security Culture

While cybersecurity teams have invested heavily in e-mail protection, endpoint security, and identity controls, new research from Fortra suggests one challenge remains difficult to solve: users.