While the New York Mets can’t make partnerships with players currently due to the lockout, nothing’s stopping them from making new business partnerships. On Friday, it was announced that Samsung would become Citi Field’s official display and technology partner. Besides this just being a corporate partnership name and a billboard at the ballpark, this is a relationship between the Mets and a company that will impact the fans. According to a release by Samsung, they’ll be decking out Citi Field to become Major League Baseball’s most technologically advanced ballpark. This includes the addition of 1,300 LCD screens throughout the stadium, as well as an enormous scoreboard in 2023.
This is a situation where you need to think of both sides of the equation. On the bright side, Citi Field, a ballpark that is already known to be fan-friendly and renowned for it’s awesome and ever-evolving selection of food, is getting a sleek upgrade. The Mets under owner Steve Cohen are striving completely to become an organization that runs first class at every capacity. Adding a technology partner that is suping up the ballpark to be the most advanced in the league is certainly going to help the organization fit that bill. The product on the field will be seen through a more clear lense with this partnership as well, as Samsung is doubling the amount of slow-motion replay cameras in the ballpark, and multiplying the amount of cameras for game coverage by three.
It will also help to make the game more interesting to see in-stadium for younger fans. The Mets finished 16th in the league for attendance last season, which should increase due to the new roster additions of Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, Mark Canha, and others. While those additions are going to attract fans of the team at a higher level, these enhancements will aid in bringing a different group of people to the games, who might not be as interested in the game but play an important role in filling seats. It’s never a bad thing to have more fans at the ballpark, so these new screens should help that at some level.
The addition of these new screens to the ballpark also present a new soapbox for those who “miss the old days” to stand upon. While it is true that we can never go back to the days of inexpensive hot dogs and seats, those who are calling for the old days might actually have a valid beef with these new installments. As a society, there is no doubt that we have developed a sickening dependence on screens. Whether we work, play, or read mets360.com on them, Americans spend on average 7 hours and 11 minutes a day looking at a screen according to DataReportal. To put that into perspective, according to OnePoll, the average American spends 5 hours and 30 minutes sleeping.
Call me old-fashioned, but I go to baseball games to escape the screens and focus on the actual game because it has become increasingly harder to do so while sitting at home and watching. The addition of these screens to the ballpark, which will most likely result in more ad space being sold, is going to make it harder to not look at one when at the ballpark. It’s unavoidable now when you go to a ballpark, which is understandable as teams keep neck-and-neck with each other to stay more advanced than the other. It would be interesting to revert back to stadiums with no large screens as the centerpiece to them. In my life as a 23 year-old, I have only been to two stadiums in my life where there were no screens, Wrigley Field and Skylands Stadium in Augusta, New Jersey. Wrigley of course has installed a screen to keep up with the rest of the MLB, and even Skylands Stadium, which is home to the Sussex County Miners has installed one as well.
In the end, the addition of more screens was something that was bound to happen. But the interesting thing to look at moving forward is when it will stop. Eventually, another team will want to up the ante on the Mets, and install more screens. And the cycle continues going up from there. It may very well be that in the future, when sports betting is legal in the state of New York, that one of the screens is used completely to display gambling odds on games. At some point, the focus of fans might not even be on the game itself, but the screen at the game. While hopefully that proves to be a false dystopian outlook on things, it could be a direction that we’re heading towards in the not too distant future.
The Mets and Samsung agreed on a deal to have Samsung become the Mets’ display and technology partner
Samsung will install 1,300 new LCD screens throughout the stadium
In 2023, Citi Field will receive a massive scoreboard update
My first thought to seeing the picture at the top was whether the scoreboard would influence the hitter’s ability to follow a 100 mph projectile, then I wondered if the board would block out some of the wind that seems to knock down many fly balls and makes Citifield into an eastern version of Oakland Coliseum.
As for the screens, I don’t think it should matter. Two weeks ago my buddy came down and we went to Houston to see the Jets/Texans play. I was looking at the screens all the time for replays and sometimes even because it was a different view of what was going on than my seat allowed. Too, as Dalton alluded to, stats were put up by Draft Kings, fantasy leaders for regular leagues, and out of town game details from that day. One of that distracted me where I could not enjoy the game just like I used to at MetLife stadium years back.
Now, I don’t know how Reliant Stadium compares to an average park and I’m sure Citifield will be much more glitzy overall, but I expect most of the 1,300 screens to be put in areas that don’t have much vantage point like ramps, escalators, concession stands and in corner areas.