NGU Sports Lighting today announced that the City of Russellville, Arkansas, has become the first municipality in the country to modernize its municipal sports parks through Performance Lighting Delivered (PLD), NGU’s innovative lighting-as-a-service business model that eliminates the need for a traditional upfront capital purchase.
Through the project, Russellville modernized sports lighting at Pleasant View Park, M.J. Hickey Park and Shiloh Park simultaneously this summer, replacing 500 aging 1,650-watt HID fixtures with 426 high-performance LED fixtures. The new system is expected to reduce connected lighting load by nearly 63 percent while providing brighter, more uniform lighting, advanced controls and long-term maintenance and technology support.
Just as importantly for Russellville, PLD provided a new way to fund and manage the improvements.
Rather than purchasing and owning the lighting system through a traditional capital project, Russellville pays a predictable monthly service fee. NGU owns and maintains the lighting system, assuming responsibility for ongoing maintenance, repairs and system performance.
“Performance Lighting Delivered allowed us to accomplish something we couldn’t have done through a traditional capital project,” said Russellville Mayor Fred Teague. “Instead of upgrading one park at a time over several years, we were able to modernize all three parks at once while paying a predictable monthly fee that fit our budget. That changed everything.”
The project grew out of a chance meeting at the National League of Cities City Summit in Salt Lake City in November 2025, where Teague stopped at the NGU Sports Lighting booth and was introduced to the PLD model.
The concept aligned with Teague’s broader “Quality Place, Quality Life” philosophy, which has guided investments in parks, public spaces, downtown revitalization, sustainability and infrastructure since he became mayor in 2023.
“When we met Mayor Teague and discussed Performance Lighting Delivered, the conversation quickly moved beyond sports lighting,” said Tony Saraceni, Vice President of Business Development at NGU Sports Lighting. “He immediately saw PLD as an infrastructure solution that could help Russellville move faster, preserve financial flexibility and improve multiple community assets at the same time. That is exactly what we designed the model to accomplish.”
Like many municipalities, Russellville faces financial constraints that can make large infrastructure projects difficult to complete at once. Without a permanent sales tax to support traditional long-term bonding, major capital improvements can require cities to wait until funding becomes available or divide projects into phases across multiple budget cycles.
By treating sports lighting as an operating expense rather than a capital purchase, PLD enabled Russellville to modernize all three facilities immediately while preserving capital for other priorities.
The project moved from the initial meeting with NGU to completed installation in just six months.
The environmental and financial benefits are also significant. The new system is projected to reduce connected lighting load from 825,000 watts to 308,424 watts, a reduction of more than 63%. Based upon typical operating hours, local utility rates and standard engineering assumptions, the project is projected to reduce annual electricity consumption by up to 516,000 kilowatt-hours and result in $127,000 in combined annual energy, demand and maintenance savings. Over 10 years, those savings could exceed $1.27 million.
For Russellville, however, upgrading its parks is about more than reducing energy and maintenance costs. The city views high-quality recreational facilities as an important quality-of-life amenity and economic development tool.
“When families travel to Russellville for a tournament, every park should reflect the same standard of excellence,” Teague said. “We strive to deliver a consistently great experience, whether you’re a local family using the park every week or a visitor coming here for the first time. Youth sports bring people into our hotels, restaurants and businesses, so investing in our parks is an investment in the entire community.”
For NGU, Russellville demonstrates how its innovative new business model can help municipalities address aging sports infrastructure without waiting years for traditional capital funding.
“Russellville is the type of story we envisioned when we created Performance Lighting Delivered,” Saraceni said. “Mayor Teague and his team weren’t simply looking for new lights. They were looking for a better way to deliver infrastructure for their community. By approaching sports lighting as a service instead of a capital purchase, they were able to improve three parks at once, reduce energy consumption and transfer the long-term responsibility for maintaining the system to NGU.”
About Performance Lighting Delivered: Performance Lighting Delivered (PLD) is NGU Sports Lighting’s lighting-as-a-service business model designed to help municipalities, school districts, colleges and other sports facility operators modernize athletic lighting without purchasing and owning the system through traditional capital expenditure. For a predictable service fee, NGU provides the lighting system, installation, ongoing maintenance, repairs, performance guarantees and technology upgrades, enabling customers to deploy modern lighting while preserving capital and transferring long-term system responsibility to NGU. Learn more at https://dontbuysportslighting.com/
About NGU Sports Lighting: NGU Sports Lighting provides high-performance sports lighting solutions designed to help schools, municipalities, colleges and sports organizations improve facility performance while reducing the financial and operational burdens associated with traditional lighting ownership. Through Performance Lighting Delivered, NGU offers an alternative to conventional sports lighting procurement by delivering lighting as an ongoing service rather than a capital purchase. Learn more at https://ngusportslighting.com/
