Cincinnati Open Tennis, Technology, and the Future of Fan Experience

[00:00:04] When you attend a major sporting event, you probably notice the athletes, the atmosphere, and the excitement. But what you probably don't notice is the technology that's quietly working behind the scenes to make your entire experience as delightful as possible. Well, my guest today is Robert Nichols. He's the Principal Technical Architect for the Cincinnati Open,

[00:00:29] one of the most prestigious tennis tournaments in the world, and one of only nine ATP Masters 1000 events globally. And fresh from a remarkable $260 million transformation that doubled the size of the venue and had to be completed in less than a year, Robert joins me today on the show floor of Cisco Live to share how technology is helping create a world-class experience

[00:00:56] across more than 40 acres of competition courts, hospitality spaces, media facilities, and fan experiences. So we'll discuss everything today from connectivity and crowd management to AI, security, digital ticketing, and why the best technology is often the technology that fans never even notice. It's a great one, this one. I absolutely love chatting with my guest today, but enough from me. Let me introduce you to him right now.

[00:01:28] So, thank you for joining me here at Cisco Live. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? Yeah, I'm Robert Nichols, Principal Technical Architect for Cincinnati Tennis, the home of Cincinnati Open. I'm one of the larger tennis tournaments in the world, prestigious, not Wimbledon. I can detect the accent, but we are an ATP Masters 1000 and WTA 1000 series event. And what we're talking about here is what we've been going through for the last two years,

[00:01:57] which is an ambitious, aggressive, challenging $260 million campus renovation and expansion that doubled the size of the campus from 20 acres to 40 acres and then had to be done in 11 months. Because if you know anything about tennis, they come on time, every time. And so five days after the previous Cincinnati Open ended, we broke ground.

[00:02:25] And 11 months later, we were ready to go with a massive renovation. So, yeah. And the story this week, from my perspective, is the remarkable team effort with a lot of contributors. And specifically, we were discussing this week Cisco and Meraki and the Cisco partners and their contribution to the success of the Open this year, as well as reaching the finish line,

[00:02:55] which was remarkable. Because in the end, the technology didn't have 11 months. We have four months. Yeah. Which you can understand. And it's such a great story. And I think for many people listening and many people attending a sporting event, they don't spend too much time thinking about the technology around them. And when fans arrive at the Cincinnati Open today, which parts of their experience are actually being enabled by technology that's going on behind the scenes that they don't even think about? Oh, my gosh. Everything.

[00:03:23] That actually is the mission of our tech team, is to provide technology that's invisible but elevates the fan experience and the player experience. And we're talking about sponsor and hospitality and everything. From a technology standpoint on the back end, every single television, and we deployed in four months again, 620 multicast IPTV platforms,

[00:03:48] which this renovation transformation allowed us to actually do certain things technologically that we weren't able to do in the past. We had aging technology. We had cabling ripped out. All that sort of stuff. We started from scratch. And from the infrastructure, as well as from a lot of the technology. And the fans would have experienced signage that was personalized on the TVs because we were using an IPTV multicast platform. The point-of-sale systems,

[00:04:17] those actually were performing at a high level with zero offline transactions because it was a robust connection and robust networking and resilient. Those types of pieces we put in place. Everything. From a standpoint of, even from the audio standpoint, we went from an analog audio platform, aging, we were able to implement with Meraki, again, a multicast,

[00:04:42] we were able to then deploy OptiPlus Dante-based amplifiers across the grounds in different zones, which allowed us to play music in a whole new way and present AV-type stuff in a whole new way that the fans hadn't experienced in past events. And you got to remember, the Cincinnati Open was a prestigious event already. It already was world-class, and the players are world-class, and all of our teams that are involved are world-class.

[00:05:08] And Cisco and Meraki allowed us to put in an infrastructure that was robust, reliable, fast to deploy, which we had to do. Cloud managed, allowed us to, saved us weeks, if not months. And we were able to put on a real show with that technology in the back end. And not to mention the public Wi-Fi. That alone, 10,000 to 14,000 people, a lot of them international.

[00:05:34] You have 285,000 people watching the venue, and then you have, are coming to the venue, representing all 50 states in the United States, and 68 countries coming in to watch tennis at the Cincinnati Open. It's because of that fan experience that we present, and Meraki and Cisco allowed us to do, support the teams in a whole new way, which elevated their ability to provide even a greater fan experience. And so, the fan felt it every year. I mean,

[00:06:04] the hospitality, how they scanned into their suites, the ticket scanning was different. You know, everything was new, and it was improved, and the transformation was remarkable. We're very proud of it. And just to hammer home the scale of what we're talking about, and the task undertaken, if Cincinnati Open lost connectivity for, let's say, 30 minutes during a major day there, what would actually happen? Would the scale of how it would impact the event?

[00:06:34] Well, of course that's not going to happen. I mean, we have Cisco Meraki in place, and it's a Cisco, is Cincinnati Open. Well, it's a very good question. The scale, the impact would be wide ranging. I mean, corporations in general would be independent, so the tennis would go on. But they, I think from a standpoint of media and broadcast, the very people that you represent, the media, to get the information out as quickly as they could. You got to remember, we,

[00:07:02] this is a huge international spotlight on the Midwest and Cincinnati. you have 89 million viewers across 187 countries being broadcast on TV through a British company, ATP Media, and Gravity Media working in conjunction with ATP Media. They, and we have 400 million social media impressions over the course of the thing. This is all from people doing things on the grounds, and if they can't connect,

[00:07:32] they can't do those things. So it would have a pretty traumatic issue. Point of sale transactions, it's still work, you know, because they have offline mode. It would be a little bit more inconvenient, but it would work. We would operate. The tennis would go on, you know? Yeah. I'm curious, people listening there, is there something that would surprise them if they could see what was happening behind the scenes during a major tournament? Is that, I mean, you mentioned things like ticket scanning and points.

[00:07:59] Is there anything else that people just possibly take for granted? Well, I think that the logistics that go into things like just parking and all those types of things and food and beverage, you know, getting that, getting that beer flowing at the bar, which everybody loves to enjoy during any sort of sporting event. All those types of things, the hospitality side of it, the back end, the catering, the food, the aspects of kitchens, and all these things were addressed in the transformation. Now,

[00:08:28] from a technology standpoint, the logistics, we have improved the logistics by implementing things with like Cisco partners who integrate with like Meraki cameras and allow us to see things like how many people are on the grounds? Have you been to tennis before? Yes, but not since now. Well, most of them are the same. You have a day session and a night session, right? And a lot of times that day session ticket just buys you a piece of real estate, a seat in center court or whatever it may be,

[00:08:58] but then they can walk the grounds. They can do whatever they want for the day session. And then the night session comes in and takes over that spot, but then the day session people may say, big problem if you don't have ability to know how many people are on the grounds. From a logistics standpoint, think about FMB, food and beverage. Think about things like parking and security and just water. You know, do you have enough ice out there? You know, we're a very hot event. So we've implemented this solution like with wait time,

[00:09:27] which is a Cisco partner who actually does analytics of Meraki cameras. So what we had before is we were skiing the tickets, right? We knew how many people went through the gate, but we didn't know how many people were leaving. Yeah. So that problem that I said, we could have, a stadium holds 11,000 people, we could have 20,000 people on the grounds. And that requires a lot more ecology, hospitality, or horticulture, things, simple things. Ecology is a big thing,

[00:09:57] a background thing, keeping those bathrooms clean and keeping the, all that stuff. All that is impacted by that, an increase of people on the grounds. Wait time with the analytics, with the camera, we'll watch the heads of people going in and out. They are not looking at faces, just heads. And they're watching the tops and they're seeing people coming and going. And we get an accurate occupancy within 1% of how many people are on the grounds. And that is so valuable, especially on the fringes

[00:10:27] of the day, like the beginning and the end of the day. Do we have people here early? Do we have people here staying around late, you know, doing stuff? So we can adjust our stuff and the fan doesn't even know it. All they know is, is that they can still get beer. They can get through the lines. They know that we can still get all these things. There's no problems with all the services that they get on the front end. Again, all the stuff that we do is intended to be invisible, but it's invisible and it performs well.

[00:10:56] It has a tremendous impact on the fan experience and the player experience. That's the other piece. And the Cincinnati Open, on the flip side of this, has a remarkable history and tradition, but it's also gone through this $260 million transformation. So how do you approach modernizing a world-class sports venue while preserving the character and the heritage that fans love? That's the challenge that was put forth to us. And going into the tournament,

[00:11:25] you always are sitting there thinking about that very precise thing. What is the fundamental piece that brings people to Cincinnati? And it is the accessibility to, that's the best word to use, is accessibility. The accessibility of the fans to the players, the accessibility of the venue to the region. We get people coming in from all around Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, that type of thing, all around the United States, but being in Cincinnati makes it very accessible. So how do you preserve

[00:11:54] all that by making, the biggest thing to me is intimacy. We have a very intimate environment. You get very close to the players. How do we maintain that and allow the people to feel that and the players to feel intimate with the space, wanting to be there? Well, that was the part that we surprised ourselves on. I mean, the venue itself was world-class. I mean, we had just created a resort for the players. So the player experience, the player dining, the player hospitality,

[00:12:24] the suite hospitality, all those things were upgraded. So all those pieces were critical to maintaining an environment for the players to feel comfortable there, which then added to the intimacy that we can bring. The big thing that we can maintain too, you got to remember our team. Our team has world-class groups, you know, media, content, sales and ticketing, horticulture, ecology, I mentioned it all, like media and broadcast, all that piece.

[00:12:53] But one of the things that we maintained is our volunteers. We have one of the largest volunteer grids in the tennis world, 2,000-plus volunteers, and they're the greatest volunteers in the world. Those are the very people who are passionate about the event, and they come back, and they keep that sense of personal experience for both the fans and the players. So, you know, I know that we're talking about technology here, but you're sitting there, how do we maintain that? And through the architectural

[00:13:23] designs and everything we did, like our new Court 21, it's modeled after several different venues, especially in Europe, and that, it's a beautiful new stadium, intended to be our Court 3 now, maybe our Court 4, but, you know, so it's one of those things where we, what are some other things we did to be able to maintain it? We sank all the practice courts and sank most of the new courts so that you didn't have big fences with screens on them, windscreens on them, so that people could actually watch.

[00:13:53] From a tennis standpoint, a fan experience, everything that we did with this renovation kept in mind. The fan experience first, player experience, the suite and premium hospitality, and extending the services and everything we do to the media and the broadcast. Like, the network is what they wanted and we added to it and we made it better with what we did as far as, like, the transformation of the network there from a foundation level. That meant a lot

[00:14:23] to somebody like yourself. You get a workspace there with a hard line, be able to upload your stuff right away. You don't get 400 million social media impressions if you don't have a good network, you know? And, yeah. One of the other things that stood out to me is that your infrastructure now stretches across more than 40 acres. How do you approach delivering a consistent experience whether someone is sitting in a stadium seat, walking between courts, visiting concessions

[00:14:52] or watching practice sessions? It's a lot of space being covered there, isn't it? It is a lot of space and what even makes it more challenging is that we had to reconnect the dots, you know, across that space. You know about what technology we have. Most of these things are connected by copper. We ran, we ran like, just to give you some stats here from a tech standpoint, 17 miles of fiber optic cabling, you know, single mode, 5,000 strands, brand new. And this is because we ripped down all the old stuff.

[00:15:22] In a single day, our cable trays came down that were, I thought they were beautiful, but there's one of those things where they, you know, when you're trying to transform the fan experience that cable trays can't be dressed up. So those cable trays were holding 30, 40 years of connectivity and connections to connect together a 20 acre site and a single bulldozer move or a strong saw. Those cable trays came down and so did 40 years of infrastructure inside of it. Coax cabling,

[00:15:52] copper cabling, all of it had to be run underground with, so 40 miles of underground PVC conduit, you know, 28 manholes with hundreds of handholes and then, like I said, 17 miles of fiber, 5,000 strands connecting the dots together and then putting in Meraki switches everywhere and 320 access points. The scale of this network is one of the largest networks, if not the largest Meraki venue,

[00:16:21] it's one of the largest and we're talking about 100 switches distributed across 40 acres with 320 access points both inside and outside rated. You know, 170 Meraki cameras, some of them using the new MV84X which is a multi-sensor one of the first one from Meraki. Again, we were able to then monitor and manage the site and do the things like I was talking about as far as enhancing the fan experience from that level.

[00:16:52] So, yeah, and we were able to do things like a dual MDF and other types of things which allowed us to have more resiliency. So, it doesn't answer the question on the piece of the connectivity but the public Wi-Fi working with the Cincinnati Open app had a dramatic impact on how these people actually, you know, attended the event. You know, new stuff coming here that connecting into the public Wi-Fi and we're going to be doing even more with that where we're going to be able to send out alerts and say, hey, you know,

[00:17:22] there's some, this stage has got this so-and-so artist on there, you know, that type of thing or we're having a special on the special drink of the day at the, you know, at our Summit Brewery or that type of thing, you know, that type of thing. So, so the point is is that we, we, we do a lot of things like that to try to help the patrons, you know, the fan really enjoy this thing. Also, this player practice schedule, you know, when you add 14 practice courts which we did,

[00:17:52] so we now have 31 courts around the grounds. We were at 17 before. We've added, when you're talking about practice courts, people, that's a big thing. Yeah. And so the app integrated with the practice schedule and being able to pull that up anywhere on Wi-Fi with international travelers who can't necessarily connect to your 5G, you know, the, the, the, the world-class Wi-Fi was required in order to match the standard of this prestigious

[00:18:22] world-class Cincinnati Open that was going on and to match the tennis. The tennis is world-class. I mean, we're trying to just match, we're trying to create a stage that's world-class to match the quality of the tennis coming in and it's remarkable. I'd like to thank Denodo for supporting the Tech Talks network and helping us bring so many different stories to life because every business needs data that its teams can actually trust. So if you need data your teams can trust,

[00:18:52] Denodo can help your organisation deliver curated, governed and easy to use data products for analysts, business users and AI applications alike. And you can learn more by simply visiting denodo.com and we've talked a lot about the fan experience. It's at the heart of everything you're doing here. We actually call ourselves the hearted tennis. Do you? Yeah, that's our slogan. Now, fans do increasingly expect everything to happen from their smartphone

[00:19:22] and everything from ticketing to payments to navigation, social sharing. So how have those expectations changed over the last few years before you embarked on this journey and what does that mean for venue operators? I would imagine it's non-negotiable. It is. Here, listen, I mean, I've been doing this a long time and in the old days a paper ticket was great and, you know, something physical. And there are a lot of people who like the commemorative tickets, you know, they take them away with them. But there's no

[00:19:52] question that the demand of fans to have these capabilities, they actually make it better for us to manage it and to get it rolled out and to actually make it a better experience for them. It's a better experience for us. If you're able to improve their experience through a digital ticket that's being applied and then being able to scan it with NFC the same way you would scan a credit card and be able to open a suite and lock down a suite

[00:20:21] so that you don't have to worry about other types of patrons coming into your suite while you're doing a private event, that's huge. But for us it improves things. We just have kind of rolled with that because we love it too. We go to these other sporting venues and, you know, we talk about tennis in general. I mean, we go and we do the research but we also go to other venues to see what they do.

[00:20:50] They inspire us and they make us want to be better and that aspect of it, the digital piece of it, being able to use the app, being able to do more on the app, getting more content on the app so that people can, I mean, there's all sorts of things that we can try. And with the technology in place that we have now, with Meraki cameras and the switches and all that type of stuff, and the Wi-Fi capabilities of heat mapping and different types of pieces that go into that, we can actually improve

[00:21:19] the fan experience that way too, indirectly. And that's technology, you know, working with the smartphone, telling them and guiding them, hey, you, this stadium is almost full. If you want to go watch that match, there it is. And that's integrated with the technology. So, and for us, if the food court's full and we wanted to get more attention on the Southside Bar, we say, hey, Southside Bar has no line, but here's a wait time over here. And so we use it, that's what we're using is wait time for, you

[00:21:49] know, like occupancy tracking, but also being able to provide people guidance on the venue and line lengths and all different types of things. So there's all sorts of pieces like that. And I'm curious, when you look back at the digital transformation journey that you've been on here, and also the work that you've done going to different venues and looking at different fan experiences, what are the biggest lessons that you've learned on this journey? It's a whole podcast. Yeah, it is. It's a tremendous, well, here's the thing. The one thing

[00:22:18] that is consistent here is the sport of tennis. It's been around for centuries, you know, and it never amazes me to see how international, it's an exponential growth in interest year after year. As far as like the technology and the viewership and people watching it internationally, to see that growth and see the Cincinnati Open, which should start in

[00:22:46] 1899, and to have it expand and continue to grow and evolve and evolve and evolve, that's the one thing that I just have grown to expect. Going back 25 years, every year there's something new. Every year there's something to do better. And with technology, it's the same way. I mean, in the old days, shoot, when we were scanning tickets with the old ticket scanners, I remember trying to install an access point for the ticket vendor to

[00:23:15] be able to, like an 800-foot cable they tried to run. And I'm like, why did you run an 800-foot cable? Well, that's where the gate is. And I go, well, that's not how the technology works. And you just sit there and you're lecturing the ticket vendor and how to scan tickets. But nowadays, it's, you know, you have so many different groups. And it's actually a UK-based business, Fortress, who we've kind of moved over to scan tickets and suite scans and all that type of stuff. They're going to be at

[00:23:43] FIFA doing that type of stuff. That's a phenomenal app for us. And integrating, again, with Meraki, and we're utilizing Genia on the access control side, which those two pieces alone allow us to use phones again, no badges, that type of thing. Now, we use badges during the open, to be clear. We have RFID badges and that type of thing. Credentials are very important for the open, and we take security very seriously.

[00:24:11] But the things that have changed is the thing that is consistent is that it is always changing and evolving. And that's what you have to be prepared for. Again, why we needed a strong foundation on the internet is so that it could evolve. And that's the thing I expect year in and year out now. It surprised me in the beginning, doesn't surprise me now, you know. And if we were to look further ahead and look into a virtual crystal ball of sorts, what do you think the next generation of sports venues will look like?

[00:24:41] How do you see AI automation, connected infrastructure, and other digital services continuing to change the way that fans experience live events? Well, you live and breathe this. You're probably following this stuff all the time. But where do you see it all heading? Well, there's no question AI and agentic AI specifically is going to have an impact on specifically social media, the media and broadcast routines of this. I mean, how people experience the tennis

[00:25:11] outside the venue, I think will be big. We're already seeing though AI. AI is actually, you know, the current versions, which is the neural network version, that's fairly recent and everybody's using that. You know, that type of thing is popular. But if you think about AI and tennis, Hawkeye is calling live calling. Yeah. And that was pulled together in time. Well, it was doing review before. Now it's doing the automatic line calls and that was kind of out of

[00:25:41] a necessity. We had to do that for COVID. We couldn't have line judges on the court, if you remember, if you go back in time. So Hawkeye is AI. They do, we put in a massive amount of infrastructure for Hawkeye to be able to do their piece. SMT is our live scoring vendor who has been around for years. They also do video walls and the scoring boards and everything else. Like we bring in the video walls and the scoreboards year in and year out. These guys, they have to do analytics on that

[00:26:10] data all the time and produce it and display it as part of media feeds and stuff that we put up on our IPTV platform. So these analytics and AI type generation based upon what happens on the match is, yeah, it's going on every day. We're utilizing it for what stuff that we just put in with Meraki cameras. Okay. So, and I don't know how we're doing on time, but anyways, with

[00:26:38] Meraki cameras, again, with Genia, we have automated access control that can do AI integration with Meraki and tell us exactly what's going on at that point. But then we've integrated with another platform called Hivewatch, which actually is a security and operations incident platform. And their goal is try to reduce the noise involved with those types of incidences. So when a Genia access control event goes, they actually, API calls, they're

[00:27:07] all cloud-based, API calls over the Hivewatch. Hivewatch is integrated with the Meraki cameras, which we then point to where that door is. If a lock or a door is held open or something, which would generate an ACL alert, you know, the door's held open, you know. Meraki, the Hivewatch will go out to the Meraki camera, pull the footage, look at it with an AI operator and validate whether a human is needed to worry about that event. Wow.

[00:27:36] So much gold in talking with you today. For anybody listening, whether they are a tennis fan, a tech fan, a sports venue, wanting to come to the Open there and experience it for themselves, where would you like me to point everyone listening? Go visit our website. Go to CincinnatiOpen.com. Buy ticket packages, learn all that type of stuff. You know, I encourage people to come because if you've never come to see a tennis tournament, the Cincinnati Open, once again, that intimacy, that personal

[00:28:04] attention, you will enjoy it. And the hospitality, the food and beverage, just the overall premium experience, you feel it up and down, left and right. And every year it's something new. You know, even if you've come many years in the past and you're considering where it's huge. I mean, the change is always, even though tennis is the same, although tennis does evolve. I mean, you look at the players and you see how the changes occur with tennis itself and how they play. But if you think about what has happened with this

[00:28:33] event year after year after year, especially over the last decade, yeah, I mean, you're going to experience something new every year. Well, I've officially added it to my bucket list. Come on, man. Come on over. Well, I will have links to absolutely everything. I encourage people to go visit and feedback to me and yourself there. Let me know how it goes. But thank you for sharing your story today. Really appreciate it. No, I thank you for the time. I love sharing the story. What I loved about this conversation was how it completely changed the way that I think about live sporting events.

[00:29:03] When most people watch a tennis match, for example, they focus on the players, the action on court. But behind every ticket scan, every mobile payment, every social media post, every hospitality experience, and every TV broadcast feed is an extraordinary amount of technology working together behind the scenes to keep everything running smoothly. And Robert also highlighted something that applies far beyond sport.

[00:29:33] Yes, technology delivers its greatest value, but mostly when it's invisible. Fans don't attend the Cincinnati Open to admire the network infrastructure, but they come for the experience. And the role of technology here is to remove friction, solve problems, and create moments that people remember. So maybe the biggest takeaway here was that while the Cincinnati Open has embraced digital transformation, we should also highlight that

[00:30:03] it never lost sight of what made the tournament so special in the first place. Accessibility, intimacy, bringing people closer to the sport that they love, and remaining respectful to the tradition of the event too. But as always, love to hear your thoughts. What's the most impressive use of technology that you've experienced at a live sporting event? techtalksnetwork.com You can leave me a DM or an audio message. Love to hear from you.

[00:30:33] But that's it for today. I've taken up far too much of your time. So thank you for listening as always, and I'll speak with you again tomorrow. Bye for now.