As we approach the 2028 opening of a new Las Vegas Athletics ballpark, the team’s operational plans for the facility will prominently feature cutting-edge tech–not a surprise in a city where The Sphere has been a huge hit.
As construction on the new Las Vegas Athletics ballpark continues apace, the team’s senior vice president of technology, Vikrant Bodalia, has been speaking out about how the new facility will prominently feature tech as part of the fan experience. This in and of itself is not a surprise, as sporting venues of all sorts have been stressing tech to one extent or another.
Most of these efforts have come in smaller venues like basketball and hockey arenas, as well as concert facilities. (It’s a little harder to do when it comes for a large screen serving the needs of 65,000 fans at an NFL game, of course.) Now, tech at the ballpark can mean many things, ranging from WiFi for all to paperless tickets and mobile commerce to between-innings contests calling for fan participation to videoscreens of all sizes, including huge main displays to fascia boards to under-deck screens.
There are some practical reasons for all the tech. Not every seat in a stadium has a great view of the action; try sitting in a corner field-level suite at US Bank Stadium and you might end of spending more time watching the game on the big screen than watching the action from an awkward angle. And, when done right, venue tech can generate a whole lot of revenue, as sponsors seek to reach fans in a unique manner.
And, in some ways, Vegas fans have been on the cutting edge of venue tech. When T-Mobile Arena opened in 2015 as home of the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights, loud tech was part of the mix. It’s still a leader on the NHL front. And The Sphere set the bar very high on the venue-tech front, using the dome’s exterior as a 24-hour entertainment and promotional force, while creating a surprisingly intimate experience for concerts and movies on the interior. The Sphere is basically a huge videoboard installed as a dome.
So while we won’t see that level of tech at the Las Vegas Athletics ballpark, Bodalia–whose experience includes the opening off T-Mobile Arena–says fans should expect a healthy heaping of tech across all the experiences planned for the ballpark, including concerts and larger events. From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
“We bring in different events, concerts, conferences and baseball games,” he said. “The cornerstone pillar is the technology and how it weaves the whole fabric together from ticketing — we have gone to paperless tickets — to now frictionless markets.”
The A’s will look to increase the entertainment value of baseball games or other events at the ballpark by adding immersive elements for all fans with top-notch acoustics and video boards.
“The (video) boards are going to be designed so that when fans are leaving home, you’re going to feel like you’re watching all those Avengers movies where you just feel emotions and drama and entertainment,” Bodalia said. “So, it’s not about just the win or loss on the field — those are going to happen — but when fans come in, we want to have them leave with that cinematic, immersive experience and go home energized and say, ‘Holy crap, that was one of the best experiences I’ve had.’”
As noted, the new ballpark opens in 2028, and construction continues apace. For those who predicted the ballpark would never open or the A’s would run out of money, the top of the article contains a screen cap from yesterday, showing how the main roof trusses are in place and work is proceeding on interior spaces. There are some issues with ballpark features outside the Athletics’ control, but they won’t affect the ballpark proper.
Image of construction cam courtesy of the Athletics.
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