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By: Carolyn Braff, Editor Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - 1:36 pm |
By Carolyn Braff
In 2004, the San Francisco Giants took a leap of faith, investing in WiFi connectivity at AT&T Park at a time when WiFi was not yet standard on laptops and there were no smartphones.
“It was a little chicken-and-egg,” explains Bill Schlough, SVP/CIO of the San Francisco Giants. “But thanks to being AT&T Park, it made a lot of sense for us and for AT&T to put the WiFi infrastructure in place. At that point, it was kind of a novelty for a few fans who would bring laptops to our games, and it primarily served the media and photographers.”
Fast-forward five years and the WiFi access at AT&T Park now provides one of the most innovative in-stadium experiences in Major League Baseball. One hundred thirty-nine 802.11-b/g wireless access points throughout AT&T Park allow fans to access the Giants’ in-stadium Web portal, the Digital Dugout. The exclusive applications are delivered only within AT&T Park to any WiFi-enabled device, completely free of charge.
“When the iPhone came out in 2007, it really changed the game,” Schlough says. “For the first time, a whole bunch of people out there actually had a WiFi-enabled device that they could have in their pocket, as opposed to bringing a laptop to the game. As a result, we’ve continued to push the envelope with content.”
The Application Lineup
That content includes four newly upgraded “killer apps,” according to Schlough. The first is a video offering, AT&T WiFi replay, which allows fans to view replays of exciting or controversial plays during the course of the game.
“We’ll put multiple camera angles up there and show slow-motion or other replays that you can get at home but you can’t get in the ballpark on the big screen and you definitely can’t get on-demand,” he says. “We can’t show controversial plays on the big screen in baseball, but, if you bring a smartphone with you, we can give that to you.”
That video is produced directly out of the Giants’ HD production-control room, which was built for the 2007 season. The same Sony equipment that powers the Mitsubishi Diamond Vision video board is used for the WiFi video.
“We did not add any resources to our production room,” Schlough explains. “We just gave them the simple ability to transcode the video into two different formats, one that works on the laptop and another that works on smartphones. When they’re cutting up video, they just push a button, name the video appropriately, and it’s instantly transcoded and routed to our server.”
The transcoding process takes about two minutes, so fans can generally access video content from the Digital Dugout three minutes after the play is over.
Thought for Food
The Digital Dugout’s second killer app is the Food Finder, which allows fans to locate the nearest food, drink, or concession stand to their current location.
“When you come into the ballpark, you indicate your seat location, and then you can say I want to find a food, a drink, or a concession stand,” Schlough says. “It will list the 100-plus drinks that we serve at the ballpark, tell you where to get that great crab sandwich, or just find what stand is nearest to you. We have such a diverse offering of food at our ballpark that fans love scrolling through and looking at all the different offerings.”
The third killer app, Pitch Tracker, routes fans to the MLB.com Pitch Tracker, where fans can track the game and access score updates and statistics directly from the league. Finally, FanCaptions provides closed-captioning of all PA announcements for hearing-impaired fans. The Guest Services office at the ballpark will even lend an iPod Touch to hearing-impaired fans for the duration of the game, so that they can enjoy the in-park entertainment.
Dugout Access for All
Fans can access the Digital Dugout from any WiFi-enabled device as soon as they enter AT&T Park, whether or not their phones are on the AT&T Network (no download is required). However, the content is not offered via 3G or cellular networks because the Giants want to limit the Digital Dugout experience to the confines of the ballpark.
In addition to the 139 802.11-b/g access points distributed throughout the park, the Giants set up a variable-rate connection to the Internet, provided by AT&T.
“We ramp it up as required,” Schlough says. “In a typical game, it might be as low as 3 Mb, but we can ramp that up to 50 or 100 for a post-season event or All-Star Game. Fans really love the content we provide, but they also love the ability to go wherever they want for free on the Internet at high speed while they’re here at the ballpark.”
A server at the ballpark hosts the video content offered via the AT&T WiFi replay, as well as the other applications available through the Digital Dugout.
A Heavy-Hitting Investment
So why doesn’t every ballpark in the country offer fans a similar in-arena experience?
“It’s not cheap,” Schlough acknowledges. “It costs approximately $100,000 to build in the video-transcoding capabilities and the server piece, and the WiFi network itself is a pretty significant expense. You have to completely wire your park in order to make it WiFi, run conduit and cabling to all the remote crevices and locations around the ballpark to mount these access points. It’s a six-figure investment.”
The investment certainly made sense for the Giants, Schlough says, because they play at AT&T Park, but, for arenas that do not have a telecommunications provider as a naming-rights partner, it may be more difficult to justify such an investment.
For the Giants, at least, that investment is paying dividends. Through June, an average of 848 fans per game logged on to the Digital Dugout, an increase of 517% over the past two years.
“It’s really driven by the fact that people have smartphones, which they didn’t have before,” Schlough says of the Digital Dugout’s increasing popularity. “Our busiest game ever was 1,305 folks accessing the network, but we can detect how many smartphone devices there are in the ballpark, so we know that there are a lot of people that have smartphones that are not on the network. There is a huge untapped market for us. We have this infrastructure, so we’ll just keep layering in more content, and, hopefully, more and more fans will take advantage of it.”
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