I'm not an avid baseball fan but I do enjoy partaking in my boyfriend's Yankee season tickets a few times a year. Recently, an announcement on the NY Post about changes to Yankee stadium caught my attention:
"Instant replays and a variety of camera angles will soon be accessible via cellphone, and fans may even be able to dial up hot dogs and beer, team officials announced yesterday." NY Post
I'm a little bit torn. On one hand, it seems that it will take away from the classic "experience" of the game. There's something about baseball that makes you think of a father/son enjoying some bonding time, hot dogs and waving giant foam fingers. But on the other hand, the experience is already so far from that with $10 beers, overweight men with the team's name spelled out on their stomachs and homerun balls selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Sporting events, especially baseball games (perhaps because of the America's Pastime references), feel like large social gatherings. Thousands of people coming together to share the experience of rooting for their team. There's a collective feeling of "we". This technology makes it more about the "me". People will spend more time staring at their phones and seatbacks instead of high-fiving the strangers around them after a stellar play.
I'd like to see them take this technology even further. Interactive games that folks can play against one another on the large stadium screens, creating/voting on songs/playlists, posting photos they take at the stadium for all to see... make it a "Personalized We" experience.
Tracy Richards
Strategists & Planners
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