By Joe Lemire

Hosting early round matches of the World Cup has helped Americans better understand cricket, but at Saturday’s championship, the whole world will get its own opportunity to see the sport in a new light.

M3 Innovation, a sports lighting company started by the co-founders of Ephesus, has created the first cricket-specific LED system. M3 partner Abacus Lighting installed the product, called Mako Sports Lighting, at three prominent venues already: the famed Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, Arnos Vale in St. Vincent and Kensington Oval in Barbados.

Both Arnos Vale and Kensington Oval have hosted matches throughout the ongoing ICC T20 Cricket World Cup, with Kensington selected for Saturday’s final, whose viewership likely could exceed a billion people globally.

“Cricket is the most popular sport behind soccer in the world, and we always want to go after the biggest hairy, hellacious goals,” said M3 CEO Joe Casper, whose prior company, Ephesus, is the leading provider of LED lights for North American venues and has lit the majority of recent Super Bowls.

He added, “Cricket was an order of magnitude higher in the light quality and the light distances we had to throw and, to light that pitch area between the two wickets, we said, ‘Wow, that’s a challenge that current LED lighting systems today cannot achieve.’”

Broadcasting demands are driving the needs for improvements in this era of ultra high-definition TVs. Cricket ovals are much wider than NFL stadiums, with standalone masts supporting light fixtures rather than steel structures. Casper said the brightness at the Kensington Oval is about 3700 lux, a measurement of light intensity whereas NFL stadiums are typically about 2500.

“You need to have the LED source twice as small, but you have to have it twice as bright,” Casper said. “And then the quality has to be jewelry store quality.”

To accomplish this, Casper said M3 spent years innovating to build custom lenses out of silicone, which it did in conjunction with Ledil, an optics firm headquartered in Finland. M3 also developed a new aluminum alloy to achieve the right combination of strength, heat dissipation and light weight.

Work in Barbados began in late December as part of a larger renovation at Kensington Oval funded by a $25 million loan to not only enhance the venue for the nine T20 World Cup matches there, but also for its long-term viability. Damien Gaskins, the chairman of Kensington Oval Management Inc, noted the three priority objectives for a new lighting system were increased lux levels, better energy efficiency, and the ability to turn on immediately rather than requiring a long warm up period.

Gaskins said after adding only one mast of the new Mako lights, the visual quality would have been sufficient for local matches. By the time all four were installed, it exceeded the demands of international competition — and attracted interest across the island.

“We actually had persons drive from other parts of the island because they saw these lights on,” Gaskins said of the curiosity from these bright new lights. He added, “The lighting improvement has been great. It’s achieved the goals that we needed.”

Casper and his M3 co-founder, CTO Chris Nolan, previously worked together at Ephesus. After the company was acquired by Eaton’s Cooper Lighting in 2016, Casper said he wanted to explore new areas of innovation and new niche markets, leading to his departure. He and Nolan started M3 when their non-compete agreement expired.

The two primary targets for now are cricket and municipalities. M3 has installed its LED lights at 86 sports fields in the Hillsborough County school district that includes the city of Tampa. Other markets of exploration, Casper said, are military and transportation, with use at Air Force bases, seaports, airports and more.

Source: Sports Business Journal