Diamondbacks don’t plan to have fan cutouts at Chase Field

The Arizona Diamondbacks won’t follow suit with some other professional sports leagues and teams, opting not to have graphics or images of fans in the stands at their games that will be closed to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re going to have to pipe in some ambience type music, and not only music but crowd noise, so it does have that feel,” D-backs CEO Derrick Hall told Arizona Sports’ Doug & Wolf. “Obviously that’s totally new to all of us. And you’ve also got to make sure it doesn’t come off too cheesy. And I know a lot of teams and stadiums are thinking about putting cutouts of fans. We’re not going to go that route.

“We’re going to have more static signage for our corporate partners with some tarp areas. Baseball’s looking at virtual fans. That looks a lot like the video games. I’ve seen some prototypes, it looks pretty cool. But again, I think fans are going to know, if they’re at home, they’re going to know nobody’s actually there.”

It was apparent confirmation that the team won’t have fans in the stands at their games, a result that owner Ken Kendrick already expected, he told Arizona Sports’ Burns & Gambo in June.

“We’re looking at things like Zoom rooms where we can have season ticket holders and big-time fans on the DBTV video board after home runs or giving player messages,” Hall said. “I think there’s going to be some unique ways for us to engage with the audience, and I think a lot of it will carry over, even when we can have fans.

“Our game presentation won’t change much, and the reason being, we want it to sound and look as normal as possible for the players and coaches that are there, and just as normal as possible for those at home either listening on the radio or watching on TV. So you’re still going to have walk-up music, you’re going to have in-between music.”

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