Jen Booton/SportTechie
When the Golden State Warriors open their season against the Los Angeles Clippers on Thursday night, they’ll do so in their new San Francisco home, Chase Center, an 18,000-seat arena in the Mission Bay neighborhood. Located on the fringes of Silicon Valley (it’s surrounded by UCSF’s biotechnology hub) and powered by money from venture capitalists and the entertainment industry, the Warriors hope to attract and engage with digital-savvy sports fans.
SportTechie recently took a tour of the venue, which pledged 1% of its overall budget to public art. In an outdoor plaza near the bayside entrance, across the street from an under-construction public park and ferry terminal, there are are five 15 and a half feet tall steel spheres with mirrors that bring to mind The Bean in Chicago. Warriors COO Rick Welts calls them “the new selfie capital of the world.”
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Down an outdoor walkway that wraps around the arena, there’s a 3.2-acre public plaza and retail area outside the arena’s second main entrance, this one near a BART station and Uber’s new Mission Bay campus. Welts stops to point out a red “Play Sculpture” by artist Isamu Noguchi, which is on loan from SFMOMA that fans are encouraged to climb. Just beyond that there’s a massive white aluminum structure with cutouts symbolizing the movement of the basketball during 12 iconic Warriors plays, including one from 2018 when Klay Thompson set a record for 3s. “There are lots of Instagram opportunities,” Welts says.
Affixed above the arena’s Thrive City entrance is San Francisco’s first fully outdoor LED display: the 3,108 square-foot Samsung screen is 74 feet wide (the length of one and a half school buses) by 42 feet high. Welts stands in front of it with his arms outstretched, in a big reveal: this display is one of Chase Center’s crowning achievements.
This outdoor display is among the nearly 100 programmable ones placed around the arena, but it’s not the largest. That would be the one hanging above the court, the largest in the NBA. Of the scoreboard’s 15 displays measuring 9,699 square feet, the smallest is larger than the entire video board at the Warriors’ old Oakland arena.
The unprecedented amount of real estate on these screens and others placed near the corners of the ceiling gives the franchise an opportunity to explore unique content. The Warriors’ content creation team is responsible for what goes on these during games, and there will be an emphasis on stats that cater to fantasy players. “We just have so much surface area that we can show many, many, many times the game statistics than we were able to show before: the scores of other games, percentages, the really geeky stats that the hardcore fan loves,” says Welts.
Four displays at the corners of the arena will show live ShotTracker data, including field goal, three point and free throw percentages. When a player scores, the display is taken over by his headshot and arrows pointing to where he was on the floor and the trajectory of the ball. “I know that ShotTrackers have been around for a while on broadcasts, but in an arena, I have not seen this being used before,” says Paul Hawkins, the Warriors’ executive producer who is responsible for the gameday experience. “It’s for fans to really get in tune with where their favorite players’ shots are.”
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On the scoreboard over the court, the entire upper-third of the display is dedicated to live statistics from on-court players, delivered via the NBA’s video-tracking partner, Second Spectrum. Advanced stats such as assists, steals, blocks, FG attempted, offensive rebound, defensive rebound, turnaround, and shooting percentages give fans a “full menu” of information, says Hawkins: “I can’t imagine another team doing more statistics in that area. You’re lucky to get fouls, assists, rebounds and points on most team’s video boards.”
Hawkins says one of his primary goals was to design a display experience that would tap into the “basketball purists,” those who go to games and want to dial into data. “Of course we have dancers and halftime acts and we’re throwing T-shirts, but when it comes to technology and our arena, this is one of the things we want to be leaders in,” he says.
The video board has several pre-programmed modes that enable Hawkins’ content team to build immersive, data-intensive replays. In coaches mode, they can regurgitate the video feed with Second Spectrum graphics to show fans how a particular play developed. “If we see a great pick-and-roll with Draymond [Green] and Steph [Curry] at the top: Draymond sets the screen and you see a graphic bar pop up and can really follow his motion as he set that screen, watch him roll out and maybe there’s an arrow going around that shows how he picked a certain path to the basket,” says Hawkins.
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In players mode, content producers can focus on individual players and their shooting percentages at exact locations on the floor. A bubble above their heads during replays has a dynamic shooting percentage that changes as they move around the court. “If you see a player that is posting up in the corner for a corner 3 and he’s wide-open and he’s a good shooter, it says 42% there as he becomes more open. Or, as he shuffles around the corner to get to his spot, you see it go up or down,” says Hawkins.
The experience is similar to L.A. Clippers CourtVision, which is also powered by Second Spectrum and allows fans to choose from a similar set of viewing experiences in the franchise’s mobile app.
At Chase Center, these displays and their storytelling complement a number of other technological developments that cater to a new generation of fans. The team announced a new mobile app, for example, with beacons that can send real-time promotions and event updates to attendees, and interactive maps that can navigate them through the arena. They’re also rolling out 5G.
“No one shows up to a new arena and is like, ‘I can’t wait to use the 5G,’” says Warriors SVP of corporate partnerships Mike Kitts. “They just want to have the best fan experience. And, today, that involves technology.”
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