Local company installs stadium lighting for Super Bowl

Home News Local company installs stadium lighting for Super Bowl

Hillsdale’s Qualite Sports Lighting is one of the premier stadium lighting companies in the world. Located on Mechanic Street, Qualite has done stadium lighting for high schools, colleges, and professional venues all over the globe, most notably the University of Phoenix Stadium, which is home to the National Football League’s Arizona Cardinals and host of Super Bowl XLIX Sunday.
Residing in Hillsdale for almost 30 years, Qualite built itself into a leader in the stadium lighting industry. Other professional venues the company has lit include U.S. Cellular Field, home of Major League baseball’s Chicago White Sox, and professional soccer and cricket stadiums overseas. Major college programs also upgraded to Qualite’s state-of-the-art lighting, opening up opportunities for both the institutions and Qualite.
Qualite installed lighting for the Frank “Muddy” Waters Stadium, home of the Chargers, as well as Purdue University’s new softball stadium, enabling Purdue to host the NCAA regional tournament for Division I. The Missouri University Tigers, 2013 SEC football champions, also chose to use Qualite lights to make their stadium more professional.
To prepare the University of Phoenix Stadium for the Super Bowl this year, Qualite teamed up with Ephesus Lighting, a leader in high efficiency LED lighting solutions.
“We were contacted by Ephesus and were able to partner to do the lighting for the Super Bowl. Start-to-finish, the job took about four months to complete,” Qualite President Nick Page said.
The University of Phoenix Stadium is big enough to seat as many as 72,200 fans and has a retractable roof, which can provide challenges with regard to lighting.
“Each stadium is unique,” Page said. “Indoor stadiums are on catwalk systems throughout the top and are typically larger venues. Outdoor venues are mainly pole mounted lights and those tend to vary more.”
In addition to providing high-end lighting solutions in some of the world’s best venues, Qualite installs power and cost-efficient lighting.
According to the company website, the new LED lights used to illuminate the University of Phoenix Stadium expend only 310,000 watts of energy compared to the 1.24 million watts needed to power the previous lighting system in the stadium. The switch to LED lighting will save the stadium up to 75 percent in energy costs.
Qualite is the first manufacturer to offer a 30-year warranty on its products. Its website offers customized solutions to meet specific lighting needs, makes it possible to control an entire stadium full of lights with a computer or smartphone, and offers GreenStar technology, which is known as the most energy-efficient sports lighting technology available. Furthermore, most of the manufacturing for Qualite occurs in Hillsdale.
“We do the engineering, design, quoting, prewiring, labeling, and pole assembly all here in Hillsdale,” Page said.
As a staple in the lighting industry and in the city of Hillsdale for almost three decades, Qualite is continuing to grow. After supplying the college with lights for the football field, Qualite now looks to do more work for the campus.
“The process developing quotes has gone smoothly. Qualite has an excellent product and they have been very good to work with as we look at potential projects,” Hillsdale College Athletics Director Don Brubacher said in an email.
“We would love to install some new LED lights for the football field and any of the other fields,” Page said.
With Qualite’s services being secured by big-time venues like Super Bowl stadiums, the future of the company looks as bright as its lights.