Rob Schaefer (SBJ Tech)

MASON – The Cincinnati Open is in the midst of a two-year renovation that will see $260 million invested in upgrading the Lindner Family Tennis Center ahead of the 2025 edition. The tournament has also increased its technology investments, which include a number of fan-focused and operational initiatives.

Here are some that SBJ observed during his two-day tour of the site:

Many LEDs

SMT is in its 39th year as the tournament’s videoboard supplier, and in 2024 the company will be responsible for 81 unique LED displays across campus.

A particularly interesting application is the player entrance tunnel on the west side of the stadium, where fans usually gather throughout the day to get autographs or photos. By scanning radio frequency chips in the player IDs (provided by RFIDentikit), SMT projects the players’ names and selected biographical information onto an LED screen above the crowd just before they enter the corridor.

“The player entrance is a standout experience for us. The fans love being out there. It’s part of the intimacy we have on campus and the proximity of the players to the fans,” said Jansen Dell, director of capital projects for the Cincinnati Open.

“For the fans, it’s partly an experience — like, ‘Oh, that’s cool, let’s use technology.’ But partly it’s educational, right? How do you make it personal? (Novak) Djokovic, Coco (Gauff) come in, everyone knows who that is. But when you have a lower level player, how do you introduce that player? How do you make them feel comfortable? Now the fans who are right there know the player’s name, they call them out, they interact more on a personal level.”

Rob Schaefer (SBJ Tech)

The Cincinnati Open first used the player tunnel solution in 2023, but this year added an activation sponsor in the form of Cadillac, a first-year tournament partner that will receive a 10-second commercial after each player presentation at this placement.

Daktronics works with SMT and the Cincinnati Open to design the content shown on the video boards. Other notable displays include:

• Practice dishes: There are scoreboards on the outside of each practice field where fans can keep track of current and upcoming schedules.
• Game Update Center: It is located near the main entrance for fans and displays the match schedule for that day.
• Digital sign system: A display outside Holcim Stadium, the campus’s third-largest competition venue, shows the tournament draw as it progresses, including live match results and warnings of potential upsets.
• Fanzone Superwall: A large screen wall adorns the campus’s fan area, which is designed as a kind of red zone and from which the most important games are streamed.

SMT also manages the tournament’s practice facility scheduling – including a web platform for staff and players – and scoring.

“Not only are we trying to be innovative and leverage technology, but we’re also always trying to push the boundaries on the production side,” said Stephen Kemper, senior business development manager at SMT, praising the technology investments tournament owner Beemok Capital has made recently. “It’s nice to be involved in a partnership (with the Cincinnati Open) – it fits with our vision of how we want to move forward.”

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Air-conditioned seats

As part of a complete re-seating of the 12,000-seat Center Court at the Cincinnati Open, 192 air-conditioned seats were added in the first four rows on each baseline – a first for an outdoor sports venue in North America.

The seats — which the tournament calls the “Baseline Premier” section — are thickly padded and can be heated or cooled via a switch on the side. Other amenities include USB charging ports on each chair, a cooler with bottled drinks at the end of each row, free cold towels for ticket holders and access to the 1899 Club’s premium section. The tournament has also added three Cisco Meraki Wi-Fi access points to each of the Baseline sections.

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Coupling cameras

As the Cincinnati Open continues to transform its campus, Dell said it is also specifically examining consumer trends in the areas of dining and parking.

As part of a partnership with artificial intelligence-based crowd intelligence software provider WaitTime, which has worked with several professional sports companies including the Broncos, Heat, Dodgers, Pistons and 49ers, the tournament installed a camera at Mazunte’s food court booth to study queue patterns.

“The camera records the amount of traffic in line and we record how long it takes to get to the end of the line,” Dell said. “How full was the line? How many people were in line at what time of day? So we can make operational adjustments.”

On qualifying Sunday, Dell also assigned two drones – one operated by the Kimley-Horn engineering firm and the other by the Mason Police Department – to fly over the facility’s parking lots every two hours and take pictures to get a sense of how the parking layout changed throughout the day. Additional flights are planned for Tuesday and Wednesday, two of the busiest sessions of the tournament.

“I take those numbers from those parking lots, combine them with the data we see about the time that people came and went, and we can use that data to know, ‘When did people show up? Where did they park?'” Dell said. “And we can, in turn, make operational changes to the parking structure to make sure people are getting in and out faster.”