“It’s unfair, it’s not right,” Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer said very passionately about limiting T-shirt launches at NBA games to the floor seats. “Getting T-shirts to the top of the bowl is very difficult.”
But the court-sized double-sided scoreboard at the Clippers’ new Inglewood arena, Intuit Dome, is about to solve that problem. “We are in the process of mounting T-shirt cannons all along the top of the board so that every single seat in this building has a chance to catch a T-shirt,” replied Gillian Zucker, president of business operations for the Clippers.
Sure enough, during a media preview of the arena last week, the top of the so-called Halo Board began launching rolled-up T-shirts into our mid-dome section. (Specifically, a larger-than-life recording of Ballmer himself appeared on the board, chucking curled-up clothing below each cannon.)
The Clippers won’t actually play their first game at Intuit Dome until late October, but Ballmer and Zucker walked invitees through a preview of the sorts of stats, replays and time out amusements you can expect to see play out across the scoreboard. And sure, the T-shirt cannons are amusing silly, but they seemed to track with a larger and legitimate focus on the fan experience at all price points.
But first, let’s talk about the technical side of that Halo Board: It’s absolutely massive and startlingly crisp. When Ballmer was first shown a rendering of the board, which displays images on both the inside and outside of its ring, his main note was to “make it bigger.” The finished product stretches more than 600 feet in circumference and weighs in at over 519,000 pounds. Though the similar scoreboard at SoFi Stadium occupies nearly twice as many square feet, the Halo Board packs about three times as many pixels—and is maybe slightly more distracting than its NFL neighbor, but we can’t really properly judge solely based off of this very much scoreboard-focused preview in the otherwise-darkened arena.
Throughout the game, the board will flash with instant replays, real-time stats, player showcases, social media shares, a second-half-starting animation dubbed “the Storm” as well as “Steve Cam,” where you can expect Ballmer’s finest dance moves to be on display. It’ll also be where you play “the Mentalist,” Intuit Dome’s take on those “where’s the ball” sort of games during time outs or breaks between quarters. Though it wouldn’t load up properly during our preview—“we’ll get it to work, obviously, by the time we get started [for the season],” the former Microsoft CEO said—the elimination game appears to let attendees predict forthcoming colors using four buttons on their seat.
There’s a lot of focus on the in-seat experience, no matter the price point. The legroom is the same regardless of what section you’re in, and every single seat has a USB-C outlet so that you can keep your phone charged; if you forget to bring a cord, the arena will sell you one for only $5. There’s even an entire section behind the backboard of steep, soccer-like seating dubbed “the Wall” that’s reserved exclusively for Clippers fans—no opposing team merch allowed.
Ballmer credited his high school calculus teacher and football coach for this fan-first approach: “Don’t forget the real fan,” he said his mentor impressed upon him. “Don’t forget the folks who sit up high. Don’t make it all about the folks who are just paying a lot of money.”
“You know, we don’t have some of the things they do in other buildings, I didn’t want them,” Ballmer said. “You know, like a big old bar area where you didn’t sit but you could mingle and occasionally watch the game—it’s great for some people, but we wanted to take a point of view in our house, and that point of view was ‘it’s about the basketball.’”
As such, there are considerations throughout Intuit Dome that will nudge you to get back into your seat. After a trip to a cashierless Amazon Go store in Seattle, Ballmer decided that arena concessions needed to operate that way, too, so you can just scoop up a few grab-and-go boxes of food or some drinks and pay with your face on the way out. There’s a league-leading number of toilets stationed throughout the dome. And there are 199 countdown clocks around the concourses to let you know when play resumes.
Once you’re back in your seat, a set of in-arena technology can work out whether people are sitting or standing, and even pinpoint who’s loudest. “If you’re in your seat the most, you’re making the most noise, you’re going to get the most discount on merchandise, food, etc.” Ballmer said. “So we can reward you for your contribution to helping our team win.” Now here’s hoping the team can hold up their end of that “winning” part.