VOL 26 ISSUE 23, June 9, 2025
At major sports and entertainment venues, seamless communication behind the scenes is critical – and Delaware North Sportservice is invested in making that communication easier and more efficient.
Delaware North has been working with tech company Listo to overhaul how team members communicate and respond to guest needs. Pilot locations include TD Garden in Boston, American Family Field in Milwaukee and Petco Park in San Diego.
Sports Business Journal’s Ethan Joyce interviewed Chris Zwaska, senior director for technology for Sportservice and U.K. at Delaware North, to learn more about the company’s relationship with Listo and commitment to innovation and guest experience.
An excerpt of the article is below.
Chris Zwaska has spent his entire working life in sports arenas and stadiums. Zwaska’s career started in venues before overseeing the F&B provider’s strategic planning for deploying innovations.
Listo came on his radar through one of his general managers at the beginning of last year. He immediately saw a solution for a long-lingering pain point that he’s experienced firsthand.
Listo not only sets up a streamlined communication channel but also fosters the collection of data to understand more about a venue’s service needs. Zwaska pointed out that operators can now see the number of requests that come in and the time it takes to fill those through the Listo platform, providing both records and data insights that the industry has by and large gone without.
Delaware North piloted Listo’s back-of-house communications at American Family Field for its roughly 85 stand locations, launching after the All-Star break and continuing through October. The deployment went so smoothly in the ballpark that it’s being used again this season. Zwaska added that there’s real potential to affect the entirety of the Delaware North footprint, which contains approximately 50 venues spanning all major leagues.
Zwaska shared that any workflow change brings the potential for resistance. But even with a midseason start (meaning much less prep time than the offseason), adoption was quick and widespread. That led to a lot of usage, which turned into thoughtful input on how Listo could further influence a Brewers’ game day.
“We had people ideating for us almost immediately,” Zwaska added. “That is another good indicator that it was easy to use and user intuitive, which is the first and biggest hurdle in any kind of technology deployment: Is it easy to use?”