LED ticker displays and rate boards in Dubai

What LED ticker and rate displays are

An LED ticker display is a long, narrow LED strip that scrolls text and figures from right to left, such as share prices, headlines or scores. A rate display board is a fixed panel of LED digits beside printed or lit labels, showing prices that change: gold per gram, currency buy and sell rates, or fuel per litre.

Both belong to one family, which we'd call data displays. They share three things:

• The content is information, not advertising. People look at them on purpose, to find a figure.
• The figure changes. Every second for a share price, a few times a day for gold, once a month for fuel in the UAE.
• Legibility comes first. A rate board that can't be read from the shop door has failed, however good it looks.

The family, by the names people search for:

• Tickers: LED ticker, ticker tape display, stock ticker, news ticker, sports ticker, crypto ticker.
• Rate boards: gold rate display board, jewellery rate board, currency exchange rate board, bank interest rate board.
• Price signs: LED price sign, fuel price sign, digital price board, retail price display.
• Scoreboards: LED scoreboard, cricket scoreboard, video scoreboard.
• Service displays: queue and token displays, counter displays, clocks, time and temperature displays, countdown and production boards.

What they aren't: a video screen. A ticker 13 cm tall can't show a film, and a seven-segment digit can only ever be a digit. If you want pictures and video as well as figures, you want an LED screen with a data layout on it, and we cover that choice below.

Ticker, rate board, price sign or scoreboard?

Choose a ticker when there's more information than fits on a board and people have time to watch it pass. Choose a rate board when there are a few figures that people need at a glance. Choose a price sign when one or a few large numbers must be read from the road. Choose a scoreboard when the figures follow a game.

How to choose in practice

• Five figures or fewer? A board. A ticker makes people wait for the one they want.
• Fifty figures? A ticker, or a screen with pages.
• Must it be read by someone walking past in three seconds? A board with large digits.
• Must it be read from a car? A price sign, with digits sized for the road.
• Do you also want to show offers, video or your logo in motion? A small LED screen laid out with a rate table and a ticker band, in place of separate boards.
• Is the look part of the point? A ticker running around a trading floor or a bank's reception says "markets" before anyone reads it. That's a fair reason to buy one.

Many customers end up with two: a rate board at the counter and a ticker above the entrance.

LED tickers in numbers: height, length and speed

An LED ticker is specified by its height in pixels, its pixel pitch and its length. A common indoor ticker uses a 4 mm pitch and stands 32 pixels tall, which is about 13 cm of lit display, in a cabinet around 5 cm deep. Lengths start near 2 metres and extend in short steps to 30 metres or more.

One manufacturer's range, with a 4 mm pitch (Rise Display):

The same maker's cabinets start at 78 inches, about 2 metres, and grow in steps of 7.5 inches, about 19 cm. They're 1.9 inches deep. Another maker lists indoor tickers at pitches of 4, 6 and 7.62 mm and heights of 24, 32, 48 or 64 pixels, with a brightness of 1,500 nits and a maximum power of about 250 watts per square metre (Comsight).

How much fits on a ticker

A character in a clear font 32 pixels tall is roughly 20 pixels wide with its spacing. At a 4 mm pitch that's 8 cm per character, or about 12 characters to the metre.

A share entry such as a symbol, a price and a change runs to 15 to 18 characters, so a 2-metre ticker shows one entry at a time and a 6-metre ticker shows four.

Speed and the length of the loop

Text that scrolls too fast can't be read, and too slow loses people. A comfortable speed lets each character stay on screen long enough to be read twice. On a 6-metre ticker, an entry taking about 15 seconds to cross is easy to follow.

That sets the loop. Fifty shares at 17 characters each is 850 characters, or about 68 metres of text. At that speed it takes close to three minutes to come round. Someone looking for one share may wait that long. So:

• Keep the list short, or split it into groups that alternate.
• Put the figures people ask for most on a fixed board and leave the ticker for the rest.
• Use a twin ticker. A 64-pixel ticker can run two lines at once, such as shares above and headlines below.

Pitch and reading distance

A 32-pixel ticker at 4 mm has letters about 9 to 10 cm tall, readable across a banking hall. A coarser pitch makes a bigger ticker for the same pixel count: one maker lists a 32-pixel ticker at 7.62 mm and a 16-pixel economy ticker at 10 mm (TickerPlay). Sixteen pixels is enough for plain capitals and digits. It's too few for clean Arabic, which needs 24 pixels at least and reads far better at 32.

Shapes

• Straight, along a wall or above a counter.
• Corners, turning 90 degrees around a room, with the text flowing round.
• Curved, on flexible modules, around a column, a reception desk or a circular bulkhead. See flexible and curved LED screens.
• Double-sided, hung in a window or over a concourse.
• Outdoor, on a facade, sealed and several times brighter.

Power and weight

Small. A 6-metre, 32-pixel ticker has less than one square metre of LEDs, so at 250 watts per square metre it draws under 200 watts at most. At about 30 kg per square metre it weighs under 25 kg plus its frame. A wall socket and ordinary wall fixings are enough.

Stock, news, sports and crypto tickers

A ticker's content is a list of items from a data source, formatted and coloured by rules: green with an up arrow for a rise, red with a down arrow for a fall. The same hardware shows share prices, currencies, commodities, crypto, headlines, scores, or your own messages. The software and the data source decide which.

Stock and financial tickers

• What an entry shows: the symbol, the last price, and the change as a figure or a percentage, with an arrow and a colour.
• Which markets: the local exchanges, the major world indices, currencies, oil and gold. Pick what your visitors follow.
• Logos. A 48-pixel ticker has room for small company logos beside the symbols.
• Who buys them: banks, brokers, investment firms, listed companies showing their own share, and business schools with trading rooms.

News tickers

• Headlines from a news feed, or your own announcements typed in.
• Keep each item short. A headline of 60 to 80 characters fills a 6-metre ticker. Long sentences are forgotten before they finish.
• Arabic and English as alternating items, each in a large font, or on the two lines of a twin ticker. Arabic scrolls the opposite way, left to right, so each language needs its own line or its own turn.

Sports tickers

• Live scores and fixtures in sports bars, clubs, gyms and fan zones.
• Your own results at a school or club: fixtures, results and announcements, typed in by staff.

Crypto tickers

• Coin prices update every few seconds from public exchange data, round the clock.
• Desk-size tickers sold online are a different product, a small gadget for a home office. A wall ticker for an office or a shop is built like the others on this page.

Your own data

A ticker doesn't have to carry market data. Factories run production counts, call centres run queue lengths, hotels run conference schedules, and showrooms run offers. If the figure exists in a spreadsheet or a system, it can go on a ticker.

Where the data comes from

Every display on this page gets its figures in one of four ways: typed in by hand, sent from a phone or computer, pulled from your own business system, or taken from a live data feed. The right choice depends on how often the figure changes and who is responsible for it being correct.

What to know about live feeds

• We supply and install the display. Live feeds come through a software partner or your own system. We set the two up together and test them before handover.
• Market data is usually delayed. Free and low-cost share data commonly runs 15 minutes or more behind the market. Real-time data costs more and comes with terms attached.
• Showing market data in public can need a licence. Exchanges and data companies set rules on displaying their prices to the public. Ask the data provider what your subscription allows before the ticker goes on the wall.
• News headlines belong to their publishers. Use a feed whose terms allow public display.
• Say that it's delayed. A small "delayed 15 min" note at the end of the loop avoids arguments.
• The ticker needs an internet connection, wired where possible. Wi-Fi drops become frozen prices.
• What happens when the feed stops? A good system blanks the stale data, or shows the time of the last update. A frozen price shown as live is worse than an empty ticker.

What to know about manual entry

• It's reliable and free, and for figures that change a few times a day it's the sensible choice.
• Someone must be responsible. Decide who updates the board, and who does it when they're away.
• Mistakes show. A wrong digit on a gold or exchange board is a price you may be held to. Choose a system that shows the new figure for checking before it goes live.
• Head office can do it for every branch. With networked boards, one person updates all of them at once, and branch staff can't change them.
• A power cut shouldn't wipe the figures. The board should remember its last values when the power returns.

Gold rate display boards

A gold rate display board shows today's price of gold per gram for each purity a jeweller sells, in lit digits beside fixed labels. In Dubai that means four rows, for 24K, 22K, 21K and 18K, priced in dirhams per gram, often with silver or a date and time line beneath. Staff update it by remote or from a phone.

It's also called a jewellery rate display board, a gold and silver rate board or a digital gold rate board.

What goes on the board

• Four karats. Dubai's retail rates are published for 24K, 22K, 21K and 18K. On 3 October 2026, for example, they stood at AED 497.75, 460.75, 442.00 and 378.75 per gram (Dubai Online).
• Optional rows: silver, platinum, a 10-gram or ounce price, a ten-tola bar for bullion traders.
• Date and time, so customers can see the rate is current.
• Your name and logo at the top.
• Labels in Arabic and English.
• Not the making charge. The board shows the gold price. The making charge is added per piece and is the part customers negotiate.

Getting the digits right

• Five digits, at least. Rates like 497.75 need three figures before the decimal point and two after. With 24K close to AED 500 a gram, a rise to four figures before the point isn't unthinkable over the life of a board. Ask for six digits on the top rows. It costs little now and a lot later.
• Digit height. 5 to 6 cm for a board behind the counter, read from 3 to 6 metres. 10 cm or more for a board in the window, read from the walkway.
• Colour. Red and amber are traditional and bright. White on a dark or gold-finished cabinet looks more refined and suits a luxury fit-out.
• Brightness. A window board faces daylight and needs outdoor-grade LEDs. A board deep in the shop doesn't, and should dim so it doesn't glare off the showcases.

Updating it

• By remote or phone app, when the rate changes. This is how most shops do it.
• From head office, for a chain, so every branch shows the same rate at the same moment.
• Automatically, from a rate service through software, where the trader wants the board to follow the published rate without anyone touching it. This comes through our software partner.

The cabinet

We build gold rate boards in our workshop, so the cabinet can match the shop: brushed gold or black aluminium, a mirror or acrylic face, a lit logo, and a size made for the wall or window it's going in. A board bought as a standard unit online is a red-digit box. In a gold showroom, the difference shows.

Currency exchange rate boards

A currency exchange rate board lists currencies in rows, each with a flag, a code and two lit figures: the rate at which the exchange buys and the rate at which it sells. Boards run from 6 to 30 rows. Exchange houses, banks and hotels use them at the counter and in the window.

• Columns. Flag, currency name or code, "We buy", "We sell". Remittance houses often add a transfer rate, which makes three figures per row.
• Rows. Start with the currencies you trade most. In the UAE that's commonly the Indian and Pakistani rupees, the Philippine peso, the US dollar, the euro, sterling, and the Egyptian pound, with others below. Order them by how often they're asked for, with the busiest at eye level.
• Flags that can change. Slide-in or magnetic flag strips let you reorder or swap currencies without a new board.
• Digits per figure. Five or six, with a decimal point that can sit in any position. Rates range from thousands of units to small fractions, and a fixed point can't show both.
• Digit height. 2.5 cm suits a board read at the counter from 2 to 3 metres. Use 5 cm or more for a hall, and 10 cm for a board facing a mall walkway.
• Colour. One colour throughout is easiest to read. Some boards use red for buy and green for sell.
• Updating. By remote for a single branch. From head office over the network for a chain, which is the norm for exchange houses with many branches and one rate desk.
• Or a screen. A portrait LCD showing a rate table does the same job and can show offers too. It's sharper up close and weaker in a bright window. An LED board is the brighter of the two and reads from further off.

One UAE supplier publishes a price of about AED 5,700 for a 10-currency LED board (Dubai Machines).

Bank and finance rate boards

The same construction shows deposit and profit rates, loan rates or fund prices in a branch. The rows change rarely, so the labels are usually printed on a face panel that we can replace when products change.

Fuel and retail price signs

An LED fuel price sign shows the price per litre for each fuel grade in large lit digits on the station's pylon or canopy, readable from the road. In the UAE that's four grades, Super 98, Special 95, E-Plus 91 and diesel, each a three-digit price that changes once a month.

Fuel price signs

• The format. Prices are set in dirhams to two decimal places, so each grade needs three digits and a point. For October 2026 the UAE Fuel Price Committee set Super 98 at AED 4.40, Special 95 at 4.28, E-Plus 91 at 4.21 and diesel at 4.80 (Emirates 24/7).
• They change monthly. New prices take effect on the first of each month. A sign updated by remote from the forecourt, or from the office, is changed in a minute. No ladders.
• Digit height. Manufacturers list digits from 4 inches to 72 inches (LEDLE). On a roadside pylon, 12 to 24 inches, or 30 to 60 cm, is the usual range. See the sizing table below.
• Colour. One colour per grade helps drivers find theirs: commonly red, green, white and amber. Follow the fuel brand's own standard where there is one.
• Brightness and dimming. Bright enough for full sun, with a sensor that dims the digits at night so they don't dazzle.
• Sealing. The same maker lists IP65 for steel cabinets. In Dubai, heat and dust matter more than rain, so the cabinet needs ventilation that doesn't let dust in.
• Control. A radio remote with a range of about 100 metres is standard, with a computer or network link as the option.
• Double-sided, for traffic from both directions.
• Where it goes. In the price panel of a pylon sign, on the canopy fascia, or as small toppers on the pumps.

Fuel retailers have their own sign standards. We build price panels and digit units to those drawings, and supply replacements for digits that have failed.

Retail price signs

The same digit units show any price that changes and needs to be seen from a distance.

• Car washes and service centres: prices for each service.
• Car parks: tariff per hour and spaces free.
• Supermarkets and produce markets: price per kilo for the day's offers.
• Fish, meat and vegetable markets: boards of daily prices.
• Money transfer and telecom shops: today's rates and offers.
• Shelf-edge price labels are a different product, small electronic paper tags run by the store's pricing system. We don't supply those.

For a menu of many items with prices, a screen is better than digit units. See digital menu boards.

How big the digits need to be

Digit height is set by the distance of the furthest reader. A common rule is 1 inch of height for every 10 feet of distance, about 2.5 cm for every 3 metres, for comfortable reading. A scoreboard supplier's minimum is 30 cm of digit for 100 metres. Size between the two, nearer the first.

The comfortable column uses the 1 inch per 10 feet rule quoted in Excel LED's scoreboard guide. The furthest column uses the 300 mm at 100 metres minimum from AusSport. Both are for good eyesight in good conditions.

Using the table

• Measure, don't guess. Pace out the distance from the board's position to the furthest place someone will read it from. For a sports ground, measure on a satellite map.
• Gold or exchange board at the counter: readers at 3 to 6 metres, so 5 cm digits.
• Rate board in a shop window: readers at 10 to 15 metres across a walkway, so 10 cm.
• Queue display in a waiting hall: back row at 15 to 20 metres, so 15 cm.
• Fuel sign on a road: a driver at 60 km/h covers about 17 metres a second and needs four or five seconds to find a price and decide. That's 70 to 85 metres, which puts the digits at 30 to 60 cm.
• Scoreboard: see the next section.
• Size up when the reader is moving, the board is seen at an angle, the sun is on it, or the audience is older.
• Leave space. Digits need a gap around them of about half their height. A board crammed edge to edge is harder to read than a smaller digit with room.
• Labels can be smaller than digits, at about half to two-thirds the height. People learn the labels and read the numbers.

LED scoreboards

An LED scoreboard is either a board of lit digits showing the score and time, or a full LED video screen that shows the score as a layout alongside replays and sponsors. Digit boards cost far less, last for years and suit schools and clubs. Video scoreboards suit venues that sell sponsorship or show the game on screen.

What each sport needs

• Football and futsal: home and away score, match clock, half.
• Cricket: total, wickets, overs, and the target when chasing. Bigger boards add each batsman's score and names of 8 to 20 characters (AusSport).
• Basketball: score, game clock, period, team fouls, and separate shot clocks above each basket.
• Padel and tennis: sets, games and points for each side.
• Swimming and athletics: lane, time and place, linked to the timing system.
• Multi-sport halls: a board with switchable layouts, or a video screen.

Sizing a scoreboard

The same supplier's rule: if spectators are 100 metres away, 300 mm is the smallest digit to use. A school football pitch with spectators along one side, 60 to 70 metres from a board behind the far goal, needs 20 to 30 cm digits. A cricket ground, where the far boundary can be 150 metres off, needs 45 cm or more.

For video scoreboards, one manufacturer's guide matches pixel pitch to distance: P2.5 to P3 for 5 to 10 metres in an indoor hall, P3 to P5 for 10 to 30 metres, P6 to P8 for 30 to 60 metres and P10 to P16 beyond that. It gives brightness of 800 to 1,500 nits indoors and 5,500 to 6,500 outdoors (Excel LED).

Control and power

• A wireless handheld console is standard on digit boards.
• Scoring apps. Some boards take the score straight from a scoring app on a phone or tablet, so the scorer isn't keying it twice.
• Battery power. Small digit boards run from a 12-volt battery pack for a full day's play, which suits grounds with no supply at the far end. The same supplier advises at least nine hours of running time.
• Portable boards on a wheeled trolley, for clubs that share a ground or lock equipment away.
• Video boards need scoring software, a controller, and someone trained to run them. The software comes through our partner.

Built for sport

• Ball impact. A board behind a goal or beside a court will be hit. It needs a protective face or a guard.
• Sun. An outdoor board should face away from the afternoon sun where the ground allows, and needs outdoor brightness either way.
• Structure. A board on posts is a sail. We design and make the steel frame and footing in our workshop.
• Sponsor panels above and beside the digits, lit or printed, often pay for the board.

See LED screens for video screens in general.

Queue, time and temperature displays

A queue display shows the token number being called and the counter to go to, on a main board in the waiting area and a small display above each counter. Clocks, time and temperature displays, countdown timers and production boards are built the same way: lit digits beside a fixed label, driven by a simple controller.

Queue and token displays

• The parts. A ticket dispenser or kiosk, a keypad at each counter, a small display above each counter, a main display in the hall, and a speaker that calls the number.
• The main display shows the last few numbers called and their counters, so someone who looked away can catch up.
• Sound. A chime and a spoken call in Arabic and English. Many people wait looking at their phones.
• Digit height. 10 to 15 cm for the main board in a waiting hall, 5 to 7 cm above each counter.
• Simple systems need no computer: the keypads talk to the displays directly. Larger ones with several services, appointments and reports run on software, which comes through our partner.
• Where they're used: clinics, pharmacies, banks, exchange houses, typing centres, service centres and government counters.

For self-service ticketing and check-in, see digital kiosks and totems.

Clocks, time and temperature

• Digital wall clocks for halls, factories, schools and hospitals, synchronised over the network so every clock agrees.
• Outdoor time and temperature displays on building fronts and pylons, alternating the two. The temperature sensor must sit in shade with air around it, away from the cabinet's own heat, or it reads several degrees high.
• World clocks for hotel receptions and trading rooms: a row of cities with the time under each.
• Prayer-time displays for mosques and prayer rooms. See indoor LED screens.

Counters and production boards

• Countdown displays: days to an opening, a launch or an event.
• Safety boards: days since the last lost-time incident, with the site's record.
• Production boards: target, actual and difference for a line or a shift, fed from the factory's system or keyed in by a supervisor.
• Parking displays: spaces free on each level, fed by the counting system.

Segment digits or a full matrix?

A seven-segment digit forms each number from seven lit bars and can show only digits and a few letters. A full matrix is a grid of LEDs that can show any character, in any language, with symbols and arrows. Segment digits are cheaper, brighter for their power and easier to read from a distance. A matrix is flexible.

A point worth knowing about segment digits: when one bar fails, the digit still looks like a number, only the wrong one. A fuel price of 4.80 with a dead bar can read as 4.60. On any board that shows a price, check the digits regularly by running the test pattern that lights every bar.

Many boards mix the two: segment digits for the figures, and a small matrix line for a name, a message or a currency that changes.

A third option is a full-colour LED or LCD screen with a data layout. Choose it when you also want pictures and video, and accept the higher price and, for LCD, lower brightness.

Installation, power and control

Most ticker and rate displays hang on a wall from a bracket, plug into an ordinary socket and connect by Wi-Fi or a network cable. Outdoor price signs and scoreboards need a steel structure, an outdoor electrical supply and, where they face the street, a sign permit. We handle all of it.

• Survey. We measure the reading distances, check the wall or structure, find the power and the network, and look at the light the display will face.
• Indoor fixing. A ticker sits on a continuous rail so its sections line up dead straight. A slight step between sections shows as the text passes. Rate boards hang on concealed brackets.
• Height. Above head height so people don't block it, but not so high that it's read at a steep angle. For a ticker, 2.2 to 3 metres to the underside suits most rooms.
• Power. Indoor displays draw little: under 200 watts for a 6-metre ticker, and tens of watts for a segment-digit rate board. Outdoor price signs and video scoreboards need a dedicated circuit with earth-leakage protection.
• Data. A network point beside the display for anything fed from a system or a feed. Wired is steadier than Wi-Fi.
• Outdoor structure. Frames, posts and footings are designed for the wind and made in our workshop.
• Brightness. Set for the room, with a sensor or a schedule for displays near windows and all outdoor ones.
• Permits. A display on a building front or a pylon needs a sign permit like any other sign, and we apply for it. Dubai's outdoor advertising rules don't approve moving or animated signs visible to drivers, as reported by Khaleej Times, so a scrolling ticker facing a road needs checking with the authority before it's ordered. Fixed digits that change occasionally are a different case from scrolling text.
• Handover. We load the first content, connect the data source, show your staff how to update it and leave the instructions in writing.

What they cost

Cost follows the size of the digits or the length of the ticker, the number of rows, and whether the display is indoor or outdoor. A simple segment-digit rate board is among the cheapest LED displays to buy. A long full-colour ticker or a video scoreboard is priced like the LED screen it is.

Published figures:

Factory prices exclude shipping, duty, steelwork and installation. The same guide puts structure and electrical work at 15 to 25% of the panel cost.

Our own guide prices:

Prices are quoted excluding VAT.

What moves the price

• Digit height. The largest factor on boards and signs.
• Number of rows and digits.
• Segment or matrix.
• Ticker length and height.
• Indoor or outdoor.
• The cabinet. A standard powder-coated box, or a finish made to match a showroom.
• Control. A remote, a network link, or integration with your system.
• Structure and permits for outdoor signs.

Running costs

• Electricity is negligible for segment boards and small for tickers.
• Data subscriptions for live market, news or sports feeds, charged monthly by the provider.
• Software fees, if the display runs on a hosted platform.
• Maintenance after the warranty.

See our LED screen price guide for LED screens priced by area.

Maintenance and mistakes to avoid

These displays need little maintenance, but they must be right, so the checks are about accuracy as much as hardware. Test every digit monthly, keep spare digit units from the same batch, and decide who is responsible for the figures.

Care

• Run the test pattern monthly. It lights every bar and every pixel, and shows a failed segment before a customer misreads a price.
• Replace failed digits promptly. A segment digit unit is swapped in minutes. Keep one or two spares for each size.
• Dust the face with a soft dry cloth. Outdoor signs need the cabinet's filters or vents cleaned.
• Check the clock on displays that show the time, after power cuts and at long intervals.
• Check the dimming sensor on outdoor signs. A dirty sensor leaves the sign dim all day.
• Review the content on tickers every few months. Lists go out of date.
• Warranty. Ours is 1 year, with maintenance contracts afterwards.

Mistakes

1. Digits too small for the furthest reader.
2. Too few digits, so the board can't show a price once it passes a round figure.
3. A fixed decimal point on an exchange board.
4. A ticker with a three-minute loop for figures people need at once.
5. A 16-pixel ticker for Arabic.
6. Showing delayed market data as if it were live.
7. Displaying market data in public without checking the data terms.
8. No plan for when the feed stops, leaving a frozen price on show.
9. Relying on Wi-Fi for a display fed by live data.
10. Nobody responsible for updating the board.
11. An indoor board in a sunlit window.
12. A red-digit box in a showroom that spent a fortune on its fit-out.
13. Ignoring a failed segment on a price sign.
14. A scrolling ticker ordered for a road-facing facade before asking whether it will be permitted.