Los Angeles Clippers chairman Steve Ballmer has taken everything he loathes about modern NBA arenas and made it his personal mission to fix the fan experience.
During construction of the Clippers’ new home at the Intuit Dome, Ballmer raved about the facility having more than 1,100 toilets — three times the NBA arena average — which is objectively a great investment.
Then the Clippers showed off “The Wall“, 51 uninterrupted rows of seats behind one baseline specifically for Los Angeles fans to taunt opponents. Those tickets can only be resold on the Clippers’ marketplace.
Ballmer also gets bonus points for putting phone charging ports in every seat.
But the latest technological innovation he unveiled on Friday has finally solved one of biggest fan experience gripes in all of sports: The T-Shirt Cannon.
For years, teams have worked to find ways to create a t-shirt toss during timeouts that reaches every corner of the arena and not just the high-priced seats closer to the floor.
We had supercharged cannons that blasted clothing to the 300 sections. We had mascots using over-sized slingshots with horrible aim. We’ve even had teams drop shirts from the rafters with plastic bag parachutes in hopes of making the t-shirt toss more equitable.
All were bandages on a problem that kept creeping back up.
No more! Ballmer has solved it. He’s achieved the sports equivalent of splitting the atom. And it’s all thanks to the new halo video board inside the arena.
The massive band hanging from the top of the Inuit Dome is capable of firing t-shirts to any and every seat in the building. Let me say that again in my most Oprah voice: EVERY SEAT IN THE BUILDING GETS A(n equal chance at a) T-SHIRT.
“It’s unfair. It’s not right,” Steve Ballmer says about the regular t-shirt toss you see at NBA games. So what did the Clippers do? They put t-shirt cannons on the Halo Board that can apparently hit every seat in the arena so no one is left out. No, I’m not kidding! pic.twitter.com/6N5mO9psxa
— Justin Russo (@FlyByKnite) July 19, 2024
The Halo will even have t-shirt cannons to send t-shirts into the upper deck seats. pic.twitter.com/pEe0IoVDhz
— Ohm Youngmisuk (@NotoriousOHM) July 19, 2024
This is legitimately a pretty cool set up.
It’s easy to clown on Ballmer — and the Clippers, in general — but to be honest, it’s silly attention to details like these that really will make all the difference for the paying customer.
Teams aren’t always going to contend to championships, and certainly Clippers fans know that well, but you can always make sure fans have an elite experience when attending a game.
The Clippers’ new home completely raises the bar off the court and it won’t be long before rival teams start trying to catch up.
