Daktronics

Daktronics has been building the visual infrastructure of American sports for over five decades. Founded in 1968 by two electrical engineering professors at South Dakota State University — Dr. Aelred Kurtenbach and Dr. Duane Sander — the company started by building a wrestling scoreboard for the university. Today, Daktronics designs and manufactures electronic scoreboards, programmable display systems, and massive video displays for sports venues ranging from high school gymnasiums to NFL stadiums and even Times Square.

The company's products are so ubiquitous that most fans do not realize a single company is responsible for the visual experience at nearly every level of American sports. Walk into almost any high school gymnasium in the country and the scoreboard is likely a Daktronics product. Attend an NFL game and the enormous video boards are almost certainly built by Daktronics. The company has installed displays in every major professional sports league, thousands of college venues, and tens of thousands of high schools.

What makes Daktronics remarkable beyond their market dominance is their origin story. They built a world-class sports technology company from Brookings, South Dakota — population 24,000 — proving that innovation does not require a Silicon Valley address. Their manufacturing facilities remain in South Dakota and other American cities, and they have maintained a culture of engineering excellence and customer service that has kept them at the top of the industry for over 55 years.

Daktronics has evolved from simple scoreboards to fully integrated venue display systems that include video walls, ribbon boards, digital signage, and content management software. Their technology is not limited to sports — they power displays for transportation, commercial, and entertainment applications worldwide. But sports remains their signature, and the live game experience that fans take for granted is built, quite literally, on Daktronics hardware.