Upgrades on the grounds include climate-controlled seats, SMT video displays and cameras to study trends and wait times around F&B and parking.
By Rob Schaefer, Sports Business Journal
8.13.2024
MASON – The Cincinnati Open is in the middle of a two-year renovation that will see $260M poured into upgrades to the Lindner Family Tennis Center before the 2025 edition. The tournament has also scaled up its technology investment in that span with a series of fan-facing and operational initiatives.
Here are a few that SBJ observed in two days touring the grounds:
Lots of LED:
SMT is in its 39th year as the tournament’s videoboard supplier. In 2024, it is responsible for 81 unique LED displays across the campus.
One particularly interesting application is at the player entrance tunnel on the west side of the grounds, where fans typically congregate throughout the day in search of autographs or photos. By scanning radio frequency chips in players’ credentials (provided by RFIDentikit), SMT projects players’ names and select biographical information on an LED screen above the throng just before they enter the corridor.
“That player entrance is a marquee experience for us. Fans love standing out there. It’s part of that intimacy thar we have around the campus, and that closeness of the players to the fans,” said Cincinnati Open capital projects director Jansen Dell.
“It’s partly an experience for the fans – like, ‘Oh, that’s cool, let’s use technology.’ But part of it is educational, right? How do you make it personal? [Novak] Djokovic, Coco [Gauff] walk in, everybody knows who that is. But if you’ve got a lower-level player, how do you introduce that player? Make them feel comfortable? Now, the fans that are right there know that player’s name, they’re calling it out, they’re interacting more on a personal level.”
The Cincinnati Open first deployed the player tunnel solution in 2023 but this year added a sponsor of the activation in Cadillac, a first-year tournament partner that in this placement receives a 10-second commercial following each player display.
Daktronics works with SMT and the Cincinnati Open to design the content shown on the videoboards. Other notable displays include:
• Practice courts: Displays on the outside of each practice court show current and upcoming schedules for fans to follow.
• Match Update Center: Located near the primary fan entrance, it toggles through the match schedule for the day.
• Digital Draw System: A display in front of Holcim Stadium, the campus’ third-largest competition court, that lists the tournament’s draw as it progresses, including scores for live matches and alerts for potential upsets.
• Fan Zone Superwall: A large screen wall punctuates the campus’ fan plaza, designed to be a Red Zone-esque destination where marquee matches are streamed.
SMT also manages the tournament’s practice court scheduling – including a staff- and player-facing web platform – and scoring.
“We’re always not only trying to innovate and do technology, but on the production side, we’re always trying to push the envelope,” SMT senior business development manager Stephen Kemper said, while applauding the tech investment tournament owner Beemok Capital has recently made. “It’s nice to be involved in a partnership [with the Cincinnati Open] – it fits in with our vision of how we want to move forward.”
Climate-controlled seating
As part of a full, 12,000 seat re-seating of Center Court, the Cincinnati Open added 192 climate-controlled seats covering the first four rows on each baseline, a first for an outdoor sports venue in North America.
The seats – which the tournament calls its “Baseline Premier” section – are heavily padded and can be heated or cooled using a switch on the side. Additional amenities include USB charging ports on every chair, a cooler with bottled drinks at the end of each row, complimentary cold towels for ticketholders, and access to the 1899 Club premium space. The tournament also added three Cisco Meraki Wi-Fi access points to each of the baseline sections.
Clutch cameras
As the Cincinnati Open continues its campus transformation, it is also intentionally studying consumer trends around F&B and parking, Dell said.
Through a partnership with artificial intelligence-powered crowd intelligence software provider WaitTime – which has worked with several pro sports properties, including the Broncos, Heat, Dodgers, Pistons and 49ers – the tournament has installed a camera at the Mazunte food court stand to study queue patterns.
“That camera is picking up the amount of traffic that’s in line, and we’re recording how long it takes for the back of the line to get to the front of the line,” Dell said. “How full was the line? How many people were in line at what times of the day? So that we can make operational adjustments.”
On qualifying Sunday, Dell also had directed two drones – one piloted by engineering consulting firm Kimley-Horn, and the other by the Mason Police Department – to fly over the facility’s parking accommodations and capture pictures every two hours to gather a sense of how the parking layout changed throughout the day. Additional flights are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, two of the tournament’s busiest sessions.
“I’ll take those counts from those parking lots, coupled with the data that we’re seeing of what time people were ebbing and flowing, and we can use that data to know, ‘When did people show up? Where did they park?’” Dell said. “And we can make operational changes, again, to the parking structure, to make sure we get people in and out faster.”