Are You Ready for Some Football?

Tempe, Arizona-based bluemedia was chosen by the NFL to transform a park into a 50-yard flag football stadium for a national television event—the EA Sports Madden 11 Pigskin Pro-Am—staged prior to the Football Hall of Fame Game on NBC.

“This year, the project consisted of stands, entrances, a VIP area, a DJ booth area, and other staging areas. Because there was a great deal of rental fence and bike barricades brought in to set up the skeleton of the area, that meant there needed to be a ton of fence mesh and barricade graphics that needed to be done in order to put the face on the event,” says RJ Orr, bluemedia’s VP of sales.

“This project came to us as a result of our relationship with the NFL. This is the second year in a row that the NFL has been responsible for putting on the event, and is also the second year that we have partnered with the NFL to produce and install all of the large-format graphics,” continues Orr.
The NFL provided bluemedia with desigh files—primarily, images taken from the XBox 360 Madden 11 video game by EA Sports—which features NFL football players. Once the company had the files in hand, it used Adobe Creative Suite to preflight the images, then printed them on an HP Scitex XLJet 3 using an Onyx PosterShop RIP.

Total printing time was five days for all pieces of the project, which included, 64 288 x 68-inch 12-ounce Fence Mesh graphics; DJ booth graphics consisting of two 144 x 42-inch and 96 x 42-inch 12-ounce mesh graphics; 24 talent/production trailer Signs made of Coroplast, which measured 17 x 11 inches; pedestrian fence/bike barricade graphics consisting of 126 75 x 64-inch 9-ounce mesh; 85 directional signs sized 18 x 25 inches, Coroplast; one EA Logo Sign on 48-inch GatorFoam; three bleacher banners, 504 x 101 and 468 x 101 inches, on 9-ounce mesh; Pool banners for the bottom of a pool at the player hotel; scoreboard graphics measuring 96 x 54 and 34 x 15 inches; three set banners, 36 x 72 inches; hotel signage on GatorFoam, 20 x 30 inches; 72 flag decals sized 7 x 1.95 inches; fence directional mesh, 56 x 68 inches; step-and-repeat backdrop, 288 x 6 inches; 20 score number signs, 20 x 27 inches; and two scoreboard team signs, at 34 x 15 inches, on GatorFoam.

Bluemedia used its HP Scitex XLJet 3 for all of the fence mesh and its HP TurboJet for all the adhesive vinyl. The two main consumables consisted of Mehler Texnologies 12-ounce mesh and 3M for all of adhesive-backed vinyl. When it came time for finishing, the company used its Weldmaster seamer for all hemming and an automatic grommet press for grommeting.

“Some of us got to be in attendance at the event in the VIP area and watch ex-NFL stars like Deion Sanders and Kurt Warner play flag football. We even got to see Joe Montana throw a touchdown pass to Jerry Rice in person.” We are always fortunate to get an opportunity to work with the professionals at the NFL. It is a special thing to work with a client that gets it—and the NFL gets it,” says Orr.