By David Rumsey
Would any cord-cutters out there pay $24.99 a month for access to their favorite team’s games? That’s what YES Network is charging for its new direct-to-consumer subscription product offering Yankees broadcasts, starting with tomorrow’s Opening Day action.
MLB is running a pilot program with the Mets this season that will send fans a personalized welcome message with several gameday recommendations through the MLB Ballpark App as soon as they enter Citi Field, the league’s SVP/Product, Ballpark Experience & Ticketing Karri Zaremba revealed on today’s baseball-focused episode of SBJ Live ahead of Opening Day.
The program falls in line with MLB’s years-long goal of making the ballpark app home screen contextually aware. Zaremba explained a big part of that is the “personal dimension of who the user is,” which is refined as the app gets more data about each user.
“This will really provide a very powerful foundation for us to be able to continue to build upon,” she said. “And making the ballpark app highly personalized and relevant for fans based upon their context.”
Fans using the MLB Ballpark App to enter Citi Field will be greeted with a personalized message this season
On a league-wide basis, the MLB Ballpark App is implementing rotational barcodes this year for an added layer of fraud protection. “The barcode is actually updating, or rotating, every few seconds,” Zaremba explained, noting the tech’s anti-theft benefits. “(Fans will) also see animated baseballs up and down the flanks of the ticket face.”
The extra security will be key for fans reselling tickets through the MLB Ballpark App for the first time this season, as part of the league’s new deal with SeatGeek.
“We’re in a really unique position technologically, in that we own and operate our own ticketing system, in Tickets.com,” Zaremba said. “And that affords us an opportunity to integrate and interoperate with secondary marketplaces in a way that allows us to create a much more cohesive end-to-end fan experience.”
While Zaremba praised the work the Mets and Wicket have done around facial recognition technology for ticketing, she admitted the tech is not ready to be deployed league-wide.
“We’re working to make sure that we have a scalable solution before rolling it out any more broadly than that,” she said.
That work has been going on for years, Zaremba said, and is something MLB is proud of.
“Testing different facial authentication vendors and also working in close collaboration with clubs around designing an end-to-end ingress experience,” she said of the league’s efforts.
Another hot topic during this afternoon’s episode was how technology is changing concessions.
With more checkout-free stores popping up at venues, Elevate Sports Ventures EVP/Property Consulting Chris Allphin, whose company works with the league and several teams individually, thinks all 30 ballparks could be using some version of the tech for a portion of their sales as soon as the end of next season.
Braves VP/Business Strategy Justin Watkins looked further down the road, predicting that within a decade, checkout-free tech would be the “majority of what you see” in ballparks. “This is going to massively proliferate,” he said.
On the topic of mobile ordering, though, Watkins lamented operational challenges like limited concourse space when picking up food and questioned if the tech best serves the fans.
“Focus on the other parts of the system,” he suggested. “Not the technology that allows people to order, but how does that whole system interact to create a better experience?”
MLB’s personalized tech upgrades are not only serving fans at the ballpark but also at home and on the go.
MLB Chief Product Officer & Exec VP Vasanth Williams is bullish on the league’s content innovations, like a Netflix-style homepage under the Watch tab within MLB’s flagship app and advanced data for fans using MLB.TV’s new Gameday mode. “It is a big foray into helping fans consume baseball in the format that they want,” Williams said.
App homepages will look different for every fan, Williams said, with social media-style vertical video highlights that may vary depending on whether you prefer home runs or stolen bases more, for example.
Info like that based on fan click behavior will help MLB provide much richer content, according to Williams.
There were plenty of great one-liners during SBJ Live this afternoon, including:
- “If you told us five years ago that you wouldn’t be able to use cash in ballparks, nobody would have believed you. Now, it’s just accepted” — Allphin, on how quickly venue technology changes.
- “Can you tell the other fans not to go to Shake Shack? Because the line is sometimes too long” — moderator Joe Lemire, joking about the MLB Ballpark App fan recommendation pilot program at Citi Field.
- “AI’s not going to take your job, but the person that knows how to use AI is going to take your job” — Watkins, on the evolution of AI.
- “We call it ‘phygital’” — Zaremba, on the convergence of the physical and digital worlds.
- “I bet the Roman Colosseum functioned better than ballparks do today” — Watkins, on the small number of entrances venues use today compared to the historic site that had about 80 entrances.
- TMRW Sports and Next League are partnering around TGL, with the tech services consultancy being brought on to assist with the development of the tech-infused golf league’s website and mobile app.
- ASB GlassFloor’s LumiFlex court, an interactive LED basketball floor, will make its FIBA debut at the U19 Women’s World Cup in July.
- The Red Sox have become the first of Wasabi Technologies’ more than 40,000 customers to benefit from the company’s partnership with IBM Cloud Satellite to enhance real-time access cloud data. SBJ’s Joe Lemire has more details.
