Delaware North is taking a mathematical-based approach to determining when and how sports venues can safely host fans in the COVID era.
The company’s Safer Stadia tool, which was developed with mathematics and computer science researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and Omnium, a data-based consumer packaged goods marketing consultancy, calculates risk scores for every aspect of attending an event at a venue.
The tool assigns those risk scores to entrances and exits, ticketing areas, concourses, stairs, elevators, seating, concession stands and condiment carts, and other areas for specific arenas and stadiums.
The research team used a linear model of infection probability and determined a series of independent risks in the potential for transmission of COVID-19 within a sports venue: proximity, time, and the number of people with whom a person interacts.
Safer Stadia breaks up a sporting event into discrete activities — such as entering the stadium, walking to the stairs, taking the stairs or elevator, sitting for the game — and then estimates the risk of being infected. With that information, venues can determine how many seats they can fill or how many corridors, stairs or other areas should be open or closed.
Executives from Delaware North said the company is not trying to monetize the tool and will make it available to any team that wants to use it for free. Delaware North will also share its findings from Boston’s TD Garden, which is owned and operated by the company, with its clients and MLB, MLS, the NBA, NFL and NHL.
Teams can use the Safer Stadia tool to show local and state governments how they plan to safely host fans or use it to fine-tune their safety protocols.
The tool gave the Jacksonville Jaguars data that showed how certain changes — or lack of changes — to TIAA Bank Field could make the stadium safer, less safe, or make no impact on safety, said Chad Johnson, the team’s senior vice president of sales and service.
“We were able to look at multiple things, whether it be entry points, vertical movements, airflow, pedestrian traffic moving through the stadium, if we removed things throughout our concourses to create wider ways — all of those things had numerical values to them that, when ran through the model, could help validate our decisions,” Johnson said.
The tool told the Jaguars to remove certain kiosks, bar rails and picnic tables from the concourses to improve social distancing. It also suggested that the Jags increase in-seat mobile ordering and points of sale, which would help keep fans in their seats longer and prevent excessive gathering, Johnson said.
Delaware North’s model also informed the Jags’ decision to increase the point of entry ratio for TIAA Bank Field on game days, which would result in a 4-minute maximum wait time to get into the stadium, Johnson said. “We opened every gate, we kept every single restroom open. The model tells you that helps because you create less gathering of fans.”
