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Coming soon to a very big screen near you
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SSV.TV, Ireland’s largest LED screen and video company, has invested €800,000 in 120sq m of LED equipment designed for both indoor and outdoor events.
It is also purchasing 240m of stadium perimeter advertising boards, taking its total investment this year to more than €1.2 million.
The investment by the company, which has just completed a rebranding from Setanta Screens, includes video production equipment, making it one of the biggest players in the European event audio-visual production market.
Ronan O’Kelly, managing director of SSV.TV said the LED screens, which have a 10mm pixel pitch, was “of a much better standard than what has been available in Ireland to date”.
The company dominates the LED screen rental market in Ireland and is expanding its business in Britain.
SSV.TV provides the screens for large outdoor events, including Leinster and Munster rugby home matches, 200 days of racing, live concerts including last year’s Oxegen festival, and the Solheim Cup, which in 2011 took place in Meath.
“We set up a small TV channel in a field,” is how O’Kelly describes the company’s set-up at the women’s golf tournament.
“For the last 10 to 12 years, any large outdoor event you have been at, we were probably there working,” he adds.
“We don’t get too many weekends off.”
LED screens, which are mostly used in sizes ranging from 10sq m to 120sq m, are also used indoors, for example in television studios during recordings of The X Factor.
Although there is a different set of technical specifications for indoor and outdoor, the new generation of screens are capable of fitting both.
Unusually for a screen equipment company, SSV.TV is involved in video production and films the material that ends up on its screens. It also sells advertising and sponsorship space on the screens in order to help its clients offset the cost of hire.
The company has revenues of about €1.2-€1.3 million per annum and was profitable in 2011 after a tougher 2009/10, says O’Kelly. It expects to break even in 2012 as a result of its investment.
Regular stock replenishment is essential in the business, he says.
“There’s a lot of cheap stock available, but it doesn’t last, and it doesn’t look good after six months. What you really need when you buy screens are screens that will still be viable in four years’ time.”
In its former guise as Setanta Screens, the company was a subsidiary of Setanta Sports. Its majority shareholder is now concert promoter Denis Desmond’s vehicle Gaiety Investments, which helped rescue Setanta Sports’ Irish business in 2009 but is no longer connected with it.
SSV.TV recently received both RD funding from Enterprise Ireland and bank finance to assist in its expansion.
“We’re not just playing with toys here,” says O’Kelly. “We’re here to make money.”
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