ProAV panel: “Fan engagement through a finger is going to be a complete game changer”

For the “Strategic AV that Powers Human Connection: Reinventing Engagement Across Sports and Corporate Enterprises” session, Alex Gannon, AV Engineer at the San Francisco Giants, was joined by: Dan Mills, Senior Coordinating Producer at ServiceNow; Duane Yoslov, Senior Vice President (SVP) at Diversified; and moderator Paul Harding, Solutions Architect at Diversified. Together, they explored how immersive, tech-driven experiences are reshaping fan engagement and employee communications alike.

Turning corporate messaging into an event

ServiceNow’s Mills described the transformation underway at ServiceNow, where even quarterly executive updates are staged as live experiences. “It could be a really boring email or 60- or 90-minute Zoom call, but we try to get more people [engaged]. So we do it as an event. It’s almost like a nightclub show. We have a music act, special guests, and comedy. People look forward to it.”

That entertainment wrapper, Mills said, is what allows the substance of the corporate strategy to land with the employees. “They walk out, they all talk about where the markets are, and where they need to be the next three months. Our executive team brings people close all of a sudden, and that's engaging.”

Baseball: beyond the game

For Gannon, the challenge is sustaining excitement across 81 home games a season. “Unfortunately, when you play 81 games, not all of those baseball games are going to be entertaining, so we try to fill those gaps the best we can. Fans engage in the action on the field as well as the action in the stadium. At the end of the day, most of our content is sponsor-driven, and no one really wants advertisers shoved down their throats. So, we’re trying to find ways to repack them creatively, to make them more powerful.”

Recent innovations have put the fans themselves at the centre of the show. “The ability to take a fan cell phone camera and let them shoot whatever they’re seeing and see themselves on the scoreboard in front of 40,000 people has been completely game-changing,” Gannon said. Solutions like AI-driven photo morphing for theme nights and viral scoreboard moments extend the experience onto social media, keeping fans engaged between games.

Shared tools, shared challenges

Diversified’s Yoslov noted that while the scale of a stadium and a corporate town hall may appear different, the production approaches overlap. “If you’re sitting in the audience wondering where the common ground is between a corporate event space and a Major League Baseball [MLB] venue with 40,000 people – the tools are all the same and the focus is the same from a production point of view.” Diversified, he added, has deliberately built cross-sector engineering teams to “wrap in our venue team with our corporate event team, and the collective knowledge shared across that has been super valuable.”

That sharing also applies to lessons about return on investment (ROI). As Mills put it, “You can throw millions of dollars at something, and it can flop. You need to have a plan here. You need to have an idea.” Yoslov echoed the point: “We’re making gourmet kitchens to cook hot dogs. We need to do better.”

Future-proofing the experience

Looking ahead, San Francisco Giants’ Gannon stressed the importance of flexibility as the Giants rebuild their control room for the first time in two decades. He explained that the goal is to create a space adaptable enough to handle not just current demands but also new ideas and workflows that may emerge over the next 20 years, ensuring the team can execute them at a consistently high level.

At IBC2025, the executive was struck by a system that offers fans their own replay capability in premium suites. He said: “To be able to bring that physical fan engagement through a finger is going to be a complete game changer.”

For ServiceNow’s Mills, the next phase is about efficiency and intelligent design. “What’s key for us as we build is that we’re doing things strategically. Everything has a reason. If we can do things cost-efficiently, effectively, and do it well, then we’re going to see more and more of it. Cloud-based production, centralised control, and AI-driven automation will streamline the number of operators and help prove ROI to executives scrutinising cost per square foot.”

Convergence of sports and enterprise AV

Throughout the discussion, the commonality became clear: whether in a packed stadium or a global corporate town hall, technology is only as valuable as the human connection it enables. “Ultimately,” Gannon concluded, “You're only as good as your operators are. For me, keeping our operators passionate is about having equipment that's reliable and usable and makes them better at their jobs. That makes a world of difference when it comes to how fans perceive the show out on the field.”

Adrian Pennington recently investigated how Sky Sports is delivering UHD footage of the Lions Tour in Australia with remote production techniques. Discover more here.