As crowds go in American Family Field, the 220 people who gathered there March 17 for the 12th annual Wisconsin Tech Summit was tiny compared to those that show up for any Milwaukee Brewers home game.
In terms of its reach into Wisconsin’s tech sector — from major companies to startups, and from early stage investors to researchers — the event was a sellout of sorts worthy of the venue.
Sixteen major companies such as Faith Technologies, Google Cloud, Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, Oshkosh Corp., Plexus, Promega, and Rockwell Automation engaged in one-on-one strategic meetings throughout the day with emerging companies of all descriptions. There were about 170 such 15-minute sessions as the pre-screened young companies “pitched” their products and services on the stadium’s Club Level.
With the Brewers’ opening weekend homestand around the corner, conference attendees also got a glimpse at technologies that enhance fan experience, analyze player performance, and help to ensure those talented, well-paid athletes stay healthy.
Derek Hyde, who is the Brewers’ vice president of information technology, held baseball fans and non-fans alike in their seats with a presentation that helped to explain why Major League Baseball’s smallest market is above the curve on home attendance. In a few words: Parking lot to seat to game-time fan engagement.
“We have recognized that we have a great opportunity to enhance fan experience through digital processes,” Hyde said.
He may have been preaching to a techy choir, but Hyde outlined specifics that helped to rank the Brewers 14th in home attendance (more than 2.5 million) among the 30 MLB teams in 2024. In order of fan arrival:
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A streamlined approach to parking that helps people navigate stadium entry;
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Wayfinding for seats, concessions, and other ballpark attractions;
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A scoreboard that is the third largest in the MLB and, according to Hyde, the sharpest in terms of quality — “It’s a massive canvass of digital,” he said; and
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About 40 cameras that are recording almost everything that happens on the field, leading to detailed data about pitchers, hitters and “spray charts” that show who hits what ball where and in what game situation.
It’s all powered by a control center that was remodeled starting in December 2024 to ensure the latest technology is available — and more protected against cybersecurity attacks. That’s an important factor in baseball today when bad actors are more intent on stealing data than stealing bases.
Because most MLB players are well-compensated after having climbed the ranks of high school, college and minor-league baseball, they can be targets for hackers. It’s not just baseball that must be wary. Some recent examples include a ransomware scam involving the San Francisco 49ers football team, a hacked social media account used by the National Basketball Association, and a scam aimed at likely visitors to the 2025 National Football League draft in Green Bay.
Hyde said MLB teams are working with many “trusted partners” to fend off such attacks.
What the average fan may be most likely to see is how data analytics — powered in part by those 40 “Hawkeye” cameras — can make a difference on the field. If coaches want to know more about how first baseman Rhys Hoskins has performed, for example, the analytics can summarize his catch probability, home run distance, highest and lowest hit probability, home-to-first speed, and much more.
It makes one wonder how Robin Yount and Paul Molitor ever got as far as they did as Brewers without a computer dissecting every at-bat.
Perhaps most important is how those cameras and the data analysis behind them can help to diagnose injuries or potential injuries, sometimes before they happen. While it may not make every competitive player happy, the data can suggest when a player should sit out a game or two before he’s sidelined for weeks on the disabled list.
For the young tech-based companies that took part in the March 17 conference at Am-Fam Field, their “season” is just beginning. The same holds for a much larger business fueled in part by technology, the Milwaukee Brewers.
