Meet the Tempe company that creates official Super Bowl signage

December 5, 2022

When the Super Bowl is in town, the NFL and its stakeholders want everyone to know.

NFL and Super Bowl branding goes on anything you can think of — street signs, building wraps, light posts, buses, trains, cars and more. There are also videos, structures, exhibits, and other displays using technology to get the message out.

For nearly a decade a company from Tempe has been quietly designing, fabricating, printing and building all this signage for the National Football League. Bluemedia is the reason why the Super Bowl looks the way it does.

Bluemedia, which has more than 100 employees in a 105,000-square-foot facility in southwest Tempe, has become the main company the NFL uses to create almost everything seen around the Super Bowl.

bluemedia founder and CEO Jared Smith

The company started working with the NFL in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina forced a league event to be moved from New Orleans to Phoenix. Bluemedia and its founder and CEO Jared Smith kept a relationship with the NFL and in 2015 when the Super Bowl was in Phoenix the company got the opportunity to show what it could do.

Larger than life designs

In 2015, Bluemedia created a 7,000-pound, 20-foot tall football structure that sat on the corner of Central Avenue and Washington Street in downtown Phoenix. Bluemedia has been working with the NFL on every Super Bowl ever since.

For the Los Angeles Super Bowl in February of this year, the company created signage and designs inside SoFi Stadium, printed and installed wraps for buildings throughout the city, including décor for hotels the NFL was using. They fabricated structures and design elements that fans and players posed for photos around and even put on an aerial light show that used hundreds of drones to create bright and moving images, including the NFL shield logo.

bluemedia wrapped this building in Atlanta with the Bud Light Knight for Super Bowl LIII. bluemedia has been creating Super Bowl décor elements for the NFL since 2015.

PROVIDED BY BLUEMEDIA

“A lot of our clients don’t place orders, but come up with ideas — sometimes for things that have never been done before — and we figure out how to do it,” Smith said.

At one point the company referred to itself as a “print shop” but that is only a little bit of what they do now. Bluemedia now calls itself a “premier décor, fabrication, and technology execution company.” Smith breaks down the verticals into print, build and live events.

Just scratching the surface

The company started 25 years ago in a spare bedroom in Smith’s house with a focus on printing and installing custom wraps for cars and vehicles, including one for the Business Journal. But slowly they started adding more to their repertoire: printing and installing design and advertising wraps for arenas and skyscrapers; creating both temporary and permanent design elements inside college and professional sports facilities; creating large and custom signage for restaurants and retail centers; technologically advanced projections; light shows; and drone shows.

Even that is just kind of scratching the surface, Smith said.

While the Super Bowl is the biggest event in the world, Bluemedia is working year-round with dozens of events and companies across the world including Carvana, NASCAR, Major League Baseball, Salad & Go, and 3M Open. The first sports project Bluemedia worked on signage for the Arizona Coyotes.

Super Bowl LVI drone show created by bluemedia

BLUEMEDIA

Smith credits being able to land such large clients and retain them to the execution of his team and what he calls “delighters,” – or extras that Bluemedia adds to projects that is beyond what was ordered but adds to the event and experience.

“We think about what they would need to see to make them make us a vendor for life,” Smith said.

So far, Smith said he’s happy with what Bluemedia has produced for the past eight Super Bowls, but at the same time, he knows there is so much more his team can do – they just have to figure out what that is.

Looking ahead, Smith thinks drones will be a major component for Bluemedia. Earlier this year the company produced a drone show for the Fourth of July in an area of California that has a lot of air quality issues and dry conditions. Bluemedia used 400 drones to create a show synced with music. Smith imagines that will be very lucrative for the company going forward.

Smith said the company is also looking to do more gigs on the smaller end – letting businesses know that Bluemedia can do the same quality of design as it does for the Super Bowl but on a smaller level for an annual conference or convention.

Source: By Brandon Brown – Reporter, Phoenix Business Journal

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Meet the Tempe company that creates official Super Bowl signage

Larger than life designs

by: TastyAd