Ballmer’s $2B Intuit Dome: ‘You Have to Come See This’
Los Angeles Clippers president of business operations Gillian Zucker visited close to 100 sports and music venues, including college field houses and Australian football pitches, hunting for bits of inspiration as the team designed its new home over the last several years. But the Intuit Dome, which opens Thursday, also took design notes from Clippers owner Steve Ballmer’s own living room.
Speaking to architects and team execs, Ballmer listed the benefits of the modern at-home experience. A comfortable seat, a clear view, convenient trips to the kitchen—and the bathroom. Then he challenged the group. Can you build me that for 18,000 people?
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We’re about to find out. Bruno Mars officially opens Ballmer’s $2 billion home Thursday in front of a sold-out crowd, with the Clippers debut coming later this fall.
Intuit Dome steers away from many modern sports venue trends. It has just 46 traditional corporate suites, compared to 178 at Crypto.com Arena, the facility the Clippers shared with the Los Angeles Lakers. It eschews social spaces away from the court—even though experts told Ballmer “that’s what millennials like.”
The former Microsoft CEO also intentionally avoided filling the place with potentially distracting tech. With a reported net worth north of $120 billion, Ballmer, one of the 10 richest people in the world, has the luxury of turning down potential revenue opportunities.
Still, a significant amount of technology went into building a seamless fan experience. The team has created a connected fan identity program that will help visitors enter the arena and check out from cashier-less markets with as little friction as possible, using either a phone-tap or a face scan.
Seats (Ballmer reportedly tested 40 kinds of cushions) come with their own phone chargers as well as remote control buttons and dynamic LED lights meant to tie fans together in a single interactive experience, though early concepts of chairs that rumbled and pulsed in sync with basketball action were deemed a bit too interactive.
The idea is to marry the comfort of home with the unique sensation of community that comes with 18,000 fans rooting for the same outcome, immersed in the play on the court and additional information shared on a nearly $100 million wraparound “Halo Board” that hangs overhead.
The Clippers added T-shirt cannons to the board to ensure every visitor has a shot at the free merch, even those in upper sections. And the team has discussed leveraging the place’s built-in tracking technology to further reward its most committed fans.
While parts of the gameday experience come from around the world—the pretzel recipe supposedly comes from Bavaria—other elements originated much closer.
For instance, a Clippers executive was impressed during a trip through Detroit’s airport by a screen that could simultaneously show different travelers personalized information, such as flight status and gate location. Team leaders immediately began considering how the technology could fit in Intuit Dome, welcoming fans with unique messages based on how many times they’d been to a game or the section they were headed toward.
“We thought, that would be pretty neat,” Clippers CTO George Hanna said. As it turns out, the technology was developed in a lab on the other side of Los Angeles. Hanna paid Misapplied Sciences a visit for a demo. From the parking lot, he called Zucker, telling her she really ought to come check the tech out herself. She did, and had the same reaction, this time calling Ballmer from the parking lot—“Steve, you have to come see this.”
Weeks later, the Clippers were discussing just exactly where to place their own Parallel Reality board inside Intuit Dome. Come gameday, the second generation version of the screen will greet attendees of the arena’s “Wall” section, established for diehard supporters. The 105-square-foot board can show up to 100 individualized messages at once, with pixels that emit different colors in different directions.
“With this technology, shared venues like stadiums can truly provide differentiated, personalized experiences for every fan at the same time,” Misapplied Sciences CEO Albert Ng said.
The board, like many of Intuit Dome’s never-before-seen-in-a-sports-venue installations, is high-tech, yes. But like all of them, it serves a specific purpose: To help visitors get to their seats and stay there—the exact spot where Ballmer hopes Clippers fans will feel most at home.
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