Hi-tech Arena Investments Amp Up NBA Home Court Advantage
How “frictionless checkout” factors into the NBA fan experience at recently renovated or constructed arenas.
As the 2023-24 NBA (The National Basketball Association) season kicked off on Oct. 24 and 25, viewers tuning in for tip-off saw fans packing stadium seats, ready to cheer on the home team to their first win of the season. But viewers tuning in for the second half saw a different scene in many arenas – the players were on the court and ready to go, but many of the seats behind them sat empty. Those fans were still in the concourse, finishing up a washroom visit or waiting in line to buy food and beverages instead of cheering on their team.
The home crowd advantage is recognized in every sport, but it’s the most meaningful in the NBA, where home teams consistently win more than 60% of their games. Perhaps it’s because of the proximity of the fan seats to the court, with no barrier between the crowd and the players. It’s an intense environment where fans actively try to distract opponents from making free throws by being as loud as possible or booing the visiting team’s star player every time they touch the ball. But that advantage can evaporate if the fans aren’t there to play their role as the proverbial “sixth man” on the court.
“It’s our desire that you don’t want to leave the moment. We need home court advantage and that means people are there cheering for the team, wearing the colors and going bananas and your face is not (buried) in your phone,” said George Hanna, the LA Clipper’s chief technology and digital officer in a story by VenuesNow. “We want you in your seat with the phone in your pocket, watching the game.”
Driving that home court advantage is important enough to this NBA team that it is designing its new arena, with a goal of getting fans to their seats as quickly as possible and then keeping them there. It even sacrificed real estate from its seating area to put extra washrooms in place – with 1,500 bathroom fixtures according to the Los Angeles Times – trading extra ticket sales for a quicker round-trip for fans who need to go. From frictionless security checks upon entry to plugs available in the seat to charge your phone to a line-free retail experience, the goal of the arena design is to make sure those fans are cheering on their team – even at the start of the second half.
It’s the most fully realized vision of an overall trend that is seeing NBA teams invest in technology-driven renovations to eliminate waiting in lines from the fan experience, giving rise to a new vendor landscape of retailer solution providers that deploy AI-backed cameras, sensors, and gating technology to make grabbing a beer and a popcorn a matter of seconds rather than minutes.
Just Walk Out and Go Back to Your Seat
At Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, just before the start of new NHL (The National Hockey League) and NBA seasons when the stadium will host home games for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Chief Technology Officer Humza Teherany is showing off a new concourse marketplace. He taps his credit card and enters the space, grabs a Coke and a salad bowl, and then saunters out in less than 30 seconds. A media crew follows him through the store in an otherwise empty arena, but the demo shows how easy it will be for fans to get what they want quicker than ever.
“This is all about fan experience,” he says. “We focus heavily on digital and digital enablers, and through the support of the ownership group, we’re now able to actually put in the hard dollars in the renovation of the arena. It’s a great opportunity to overlay those digital components into the physical and get this digital/physical mix of experience that we think is going to be unique in sports.”
Jon Jenkins, Vice President of Just Walk Out, Amazon Web Services, demonstrates a new location at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.
MLSE owns Scotiabank Arena and has just completed year one of a three-year, $350 million renovation plan. The renovations completed in the first sprint include a pilot program for Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, with two new concessions marketplaces installed in the concourses. One is on the 100 level, and the other is on the 300 level. The stores allow fans to enter with a credit card tap at a small, automated gateway, select from the food and beverages available on the shelves and in the fridges, and then walk out the other side. Backed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services stack, the stores use an array of cameras and cognitive vision combined with weight sensors to track everything happening in the store. Once a shopper taps their credit card, they can enter the store by themselves or with friends and family. A virtual session begins, and the shopper is tracked through the store. Items they pick up off the shelf are recognized through weight sensors and cognitive vision. When the shoppers leave, the items are billed to the credit card – no cashier required.
Just Walk Out is one example of the frictionless checkout experience. It has 23 locations in the U.S. and 20 in the U.K., and the stores in Scotiabank Arena are among the first in Canada, with another one being opened in Calgary’s Scotiabank Saddledome. The stores are found in airports, convention centers, theme parks, and stadiums for the most part – places where there can be a lot of people moving through a small retail space and where lines tend to form quickly.
“The reason fans love it is because you can be in and out of the store in 10 seconds and back to your seats,” says Jon Jenkins, vice president of Just Walk Out at Amazon Web Services. “For the stadium, you’re going to sell a lot more food and beverage per unit time.”
Other than fire code considerations, there’s no limit to the number of people that can be in the store at one time, he adds. While no cashiers are necessary to ring up the sales, some staff are required. Clearly, food and beverages need to be restocked. In addition, watchers are needed at the store entrance to prevent “tailgating” when someone sneaks in behind you after you tap your credit card to have their purchases charged to your bill. Since the locations also sell beer, arena staff at the exit must stop fans and ask them to open the can and sometimes do an ID check.
Jenkins makes it clear the system is built to maintain shopper privacy. No biometrics, such as facial recognition, are used in tracking people in the store. “Once you walk in here, you’re just a head, and we track your head from the time you walk in till the time you walk out.”
That said, many frictionless checkout vendors offer a retail analytics package that helps store owners improve traffic flow, determine where products should be placed, and make other key decisions to improve sales. Purchases are linked to credit cards, and so is the cardholder’s behavior in the store, such as how long they spend, what items they consider buying before making their selections, and so on.
See More: How the Toronto Raptors Operate as the NBA’s Most Data-driven Team
Frictionless Checkout Solutions Market is Heating Up
AWS Just Walk Out is one of the more mature solutions on the market, but there is now competition from several vendors earning footholds in big name, high-traffic venues. One such competitor is San Francisco-based AiFi, with more than 100 installed locations around the world. Its solution is 100% with cognitive vision and cameras, with no additional sensors required. It offers customers three ways to integrate its technology, either through a renovation of an existing retail space, a brand new build, or a portable store that can be dropped to an indoor or outdoor location. AiFi is partnered with Verizon for its 5G connectivity. AiFi’s stores are featured in the recently renovated Footprint Center, home of the Phoenix Suns.
The Footprint Center renovations, costing $240 million, were executed in two phases and completed in 2021. The renovations also focused on improving the fan experience, with wider concourses and new places for fans to watch a game or dine. Phoenix Suns CIO Steve Reese says they were already partnered with Verizon for wireless technology in the arena, which led them to the AiFi solution. The main goal was to get fans back to their seats quickly.
“We want as many people in their seats yelling and screaming and cheering our players on,” he says. “We want every little bit of edge possible.”
Other vendors in the frictionless checkout space include AVA SmoothShop, Zippin, Standard AI, Accel Robotics, and Grabango. The vendors compete by offering various features related to the frictionless checkout experience. Some offer continuous tracking that can follow fans back to the stands for advanced metrics or be deployed in a larger and more dynamic environment where fans might leave the view of the camera – such as to go to the washroom – and then re-enter it later. There are varying levels of resilience, with some operating even if connectivity isn’t available and others providing redundant hardware. Other systems can integrate with digital signage to display menus and pricing or the ability to flag any alcohol sales so IDs are checked. The standard is to avoid privacy compliance issues by not using biometrics, but some do even more and delete video and photo material from devices regularly.
For NBA teams embarking on another long run to win a championship, frictionless checkout is just one more way to get the edge on opponents by having more fans in their seats to cheer on their players. And maybe a few more of them will be wearing an official team hat or jersey, too, since they won’t have to wait in line to buy them.
How frictionless checkout can transform the NBA arenas? How can tech innovations shape the fan experience? Let us know on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
Image Source: Shutterstock
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