What are the Lights on Football Field Called?

When designing the football field lighting, we may want to search the lights used in football stadium and find the lighting supplier of stadium lighting. However, what do you call the lights used on a football field? In fact, there are so many names associated with the lights on football stadium, such as football field lights, football pitch floodlights, stadium flood lights, high mast lights and more. As there are many alternative names, we are going to compile a list of the nomenclature of the lights on football field, so we can call them properly. Also, we will have a look at different types of football field lights, so we can select the right lighting fixtures.

How to call the lights on football field	Meaning
Flood lights	A general name of lighting fixtures that provide broad beam illumination. The lights can usually give out high intensity light beam to light up the broad area such as football fields.
Sport lights	Another type of lighting. Compared to floodlights, spot lights usually have a smaller beam angle, so it can illuminate the far distance of the football stadium.
High mast lights	As it name suggested, we can call football field lights as high mast lights as they are sometimes mounted to the tall poles with the height of 10 to 20 meters.
Football field LED lights	LED is an energy-saving light source. Many football field owners tend to replace their HID lights to LED because LED has higher life span and energy efficiency.
Metal halide football stadium lights	A conventional lighting for football field, which is applied for more than 40 years. It is occasionally eliminated nowadays because of its long warm up time.
Football stadium lighting	Compared to football field lighting, the stadium lights have a higher intensity and better optics. We will use stadium lights if the football field has demanding lumen requirement such as FIFA or Olympic Games, with > 1000 lux horizontal and vertical illuminance requirement

Why do we call football field lights as floodlights?

As its name suggested, flood light is basically an artificial light having the broad beam. The lights can “flood” on the football field floor, so we usually call them as football field floodlights. If you happen to get into the public park or recreational football fields, you may see some bright lighting fixtures are mounted to the light poles. Those lights are quite similar to what we can see in the football field, although they have different power, lumens and beam angles.

Applications of football field floodlights

Floodlights can be used in almost all types of sports lights and large area. The power can be ranged from 100W to 10000W. Let’s take a look at some examples.

1. Football fields
2. Soccer pitch
3. Stadium
4. Baseball field
5. Golf course
6. Cricket field
7. Tennis court

Floodlight is so-called a versatile lighting fixtures that fits different areas.

Why do we call stadium lights as spot lights?

Sometimes we use spot lights if the light poles are very tall (i.e. over 40 meters). This is because we need concentrated lights to illuminate the far distance, like goal line and corners. A spot light means the light beam having the beam angle of < 20 to 45 degrees. In order to provide the best lighting design of football stadium, we will need to use both floodlights and spot light on the same pole.

Floodlight vs spot light on football field

Flood lights	Spot lights
Larger beam angle (> 90 to 120 degrees)	Smaller beam angle (< 30 to 45 degress)
Light up the close distance	Light up the far distance
Light up the broad area	Light up the narrow area
Lower glare	Higher glare

Replacement of football field floodlights

If you look at the table at the beginning of the article, you will see there is a football field light called metal halide. In fact, there are so many football field owners start to switch to LED football pitch floodlights because of the following advantages:

Energy saving

Our 800W LED football field floodlights can replace up to 2000W to 3000W metal halide lights, which means we can save around 70 to 90% energy on lighting part. LED is more energy saving because of its completely different principle, using the semiconductor instead of direct heat to generate visible lights.

Switching to LED is a good choice for any football field because we can instantly save tones of running cost of football field lighting.

Lesser light pollution

We can apply anti-glare optics on LED lights so as to reduce light pollution. The advanced LED lighting on football stadium can also significantly reduce the flickering. This can give a better visual experience for football players, audiences and the camera.

Instant on and off of lighting

If you use metal halide lights in football stadium, you will need to wait for about 15 to 20 minutes to achieve the full brightness. It is not so convenient because no one would like to wait for such a long time before enjoying the football matches.

Smart control

LED stadium lights are also compatible to the smart lighting system. It support DMX system so we can control the light intensity of each light on a separate panel or on a computer. We can have versatile lighting effects.

More durable

Replacing the stadium lights with LED can save your maintenance cost because LED lasts much longer than metal halide lights. If we turn on the football field lights for 8 hours per day, LED lights can last for 20 to 35 years. The maintenance cost can be greatly reduced because the lighting installation cost of football stadium can be comparable to the price of the lights. This can not only save the cost, but the environment.

Conclusion

In this article, we are talking about some common names of football fields, like flood lights, spot lights, high mast lights, football stadium floodlights and so on. We can call them as football field lights. However, there are some variation in different types of lights. If you would like to know more about or get a free lighting design for any sports field, please feel free to contact us. We are looking forward to your message. Our email address is beatus@ledsmaster.com