How The LA Clippers’ Partnership With Globant Will Revolutionize The Fan Experience

We’ve all been there before. There’s a game you’ve been anticipating all season, or your favorite artist is finally in town for a show.

Whether it’s due to work or bad traffic, you’re running late to the event and feeling rushed. Once you arrive, there’s no time to even stop by a concession stand or wait in line for the restroom. If you do, good luck seeing the start of the game or opening act.

Fortunately for Los Angeles residents, The LA Clippers and their new partner, Globant, are working together to eliminate in-arena stress for the consumer.

Globant, a digitally native company popular for reinventing businesses through technological solutions, announced Thursday it will be the Clippers’ digital transformation partner moving forward. The focus of this new partnership is to design the team’s digital road map for Intuit Dome, the Clippers’ new state-of-the-art arena in Inglewood, which is scheduled to open in October 2024.

It’s the Clippers latest step on the path to revolutionizing the efficiency and time management involved with game nights.

Globant is a giant in the tech industry with nearly 26,000 employees, present in 21 countries and working for companies such as Google, Electronic Arts, and Santander. Developing new strategies and systems for the Clippers’ new building, they are aiming to connect all of the technologies that bring the team’s vision to life. Globant’s primary mission will be ‘minimizing friction’ at the Intuit Dome and creating seamless connections that allow fans to enjoy their time in the arena without dealing with crowds, or long waits.

“Intuit Dome will apply cutting-edge, emerging technologies to create a fan experience that reaches previously unseen levels of immersivity and engagement, and our partnership with the Clippers will integrate the technologies that bring that vision to life,” said Fernando Matzkin, Chief Business Officer of North America at Globant. “We are proud to be a partner in reinventing and reimagining the fan experience.”

Clippers chairman Steve Ballmer has been adamant from day one — fans attending games starting in 2024 will have all of their annoyances erased. In every basketball arena around the world, fans spend too much time away from the court. Concessions are a nightmare to get, especially if you’re attending as a family. Some sections in the facility don’t have nearby restrooms, making the travel distance longer for fans in addition to the lines being unbearable.

That’s mostly why the blueprints for Intuit Dome included a record number of toilets for any basketball facility, with Ballmer also mentioning contactless payments for any food, drinks, or snacks.

Globant will be the vehicle driving these new systems. Martín Migoya, Co-founder and CEO at Globant, expressed the importance of this new relationship and why they wanted to be involved with Intuit Dome.

“The sports and entertainment industry is undergoing an incredible revolution with technology as its key enabler,” Migoya said. “Globant is supporting some of the biggest sports, media, and entertainment organizations globally to accelerate their reinvention and digital transformation processes and offer better fan experiences, while increasing overall engagement. “It is an honor to begin working with the LA Clippers and their team to reinvent the basketball experience.”

The Clippers have lofty goals for their new arena, making it imperative to find the right company to invest in. In a recent interview with Forbes, Clippers CTO George Hanna discussed the unique nature of what fans can expect when the doors officially open.

“Before you’ve even walked into the venue, we’ve done things differently and we’ve thought about you and your experience as a fan, or a concert-goer,” Hanna said. “Once you’re in, it’s going to be something like you’ve never seen before. Mentioning frictionless, we’re going to have four times the number of bathrooms, every single concession – food and beverage retail stand – is a frictionless one. That doesn’t exist.”

As he mentions, this new tech will also be useful for concerts, which will also take place at the Inuit Dome along with other community events. Some of the most popular musical artists will easily sell out arenas of this size, giving it a similar feel to any NBA regular season game.

Regardless of the entertainment, the idea is for fans to get their money’s worth for that particular event.

“The goal is, we don’t want you even breaking your stride going through security, going through the main entrance, grabbing some food, maybe going to the bathroom, then getting to your seat,” Hanna said. “How quickly can do that? And this isn’t a race – you don’t get a gold prize for getting to your seat faster. We want you in your seat because we want you going bananas for the team. We want that homecourt advantage.”

Although Globant and the Clippers are keeping most of the specifics under wraps until the strategies can be tested and put into place, having a company with a strong reputation backing them was paramount for Hanna and the organization.

“Stringing this all together with the rich data platform underneath that allows it to happen, that’s what really is going to set this venue apart,” Hanna added. “Obviously for Clippers games, but also any event happening at the Intuit Dome.”

Globant will add the Clippers to a host of partnerships they’ve had in the tech sphere, including Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon. Additionally, Globant currently works with several of the world’s largest sports and entertainment organizations. Earlier this month, Globant announced an agreement with FIFA to become the Global Platform Supporter of FIFA+ and a supporter and sponsor of its flagship events. You can read more about Globant’s role in various partnerships here.

“When you start learning about our experience and the type of work we do for our clients, it’s really something powerful,” Matzkin said about Globant’s history. There’s going to be more to come. We expect this partnership with the LA Clippers to be super successful, and the FIFA one as well. We’ve been growing over the years based on the trust of the people we work with, moving from one [partnership] to another and taking off with them.”

Considering the epic vision both sides have for Intuit Dome, with the resources to make it a reality, Globant will have no issues adding more professional sports franchises to their clientele once everything comes together in 2024.

It remains to be seen how attainable these goals will be for an arena holding 18,000 people, particularly with how hectic things can get when thousands of fans gather in the concourse during halftime.

The Clippers have perpetually found new partners to trust with the design and implementation of these systems, which highlights their dedication to setting themselves apart.