VOL 27 ISSUE 34, August 31, 2026
What does it mean to turn insights into action? Look no further than Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, where the onsite Sportservice team and Delaware North Analytics group have used data-driven insights to make meaningful changes to the operation.
Sports Business Journal recently highlighted the effort in a feature story, which can be found in its entirety below:
What does it mean to turn insights into action? Look no further than Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, where the onsite Sportservice team and Delaware North Analytics group have used data-driven insights to make meaningful changes to the operation.
The conversion of two underperforming stands at Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park by the venue’s operators and Delaware North Sportservice demonstrates the rapid changes that can happen in sports venue food-and-beverage layouts these days.
Delaware North’s data and analytics team identified that Stand 7 on the ballpark’s third-base side and Stand 2 on the first-base side weren’t getting it done. Following deeper study of those sections of the Reds’ stadium and fans’ behavior, the existing belly-up stands were ripped out on each side and replaced with large, open marketplaces.
“What we’re seeing is extraordinary. Very compelling results,” said Andy Worden, Delaware North’s GM at Great American Ball Park.
Among Sportservice’s baseball stadium accounts portfolio, which includes Petco Park, Truist Park, Progressive Field and Globe Life Field, Great American Ball Park’s Stand 7 “might be the single-best market we have,” said Rishav Dash, head of Delaware North Analytics (and a member of SBJ’s 2022’s class of New Voices Under 30).
The change
The belly-up stands were replaced with markets featuring multiple food concepts and a bar and 32 Oracle Simphony Kiosk self-checkout units.
“You can’t possibly wait because there are so many of them,” said Dash.
Exhibition cooking was installed in the markets, powered by fast-producing equipment like a pizza oven that produces six pies at a time, so that food can be made to order and isn’t wrapped and parked under a warming lamp.
Stand 7 in particular has become a “one-stop shop. You can get your ice cream, any hot food concept we offer in the ballpark,” said Worden. “Instead of getting in four different lines, you can go into this marketplace, and everything is self-checkout, has a barcode and is scannable.”
The results
Transactions at the revamped locations that previously averaged 90 seconds now take around 38 seconds.
At Stand 2, they saw:
- 25% growth per-capita year over year
- 30% more transactions
- 30% more items sold
- 40% higher revenue
“It works,” Dash said. “We’re able to remove the bottleneck.”
Fan feedback supported the feeling that the conversion succeeded. The Reds moved from the bottom half of MLB’s Voice of the Consumer survey (similar to NFL’s Voice of the Fan and sent to all MLB teams once a month) concessions ranking into the top half.
Heat maps
To maintain the success, the Great American Ball Park F&B ops team uses a tool developed in-house to forecast a stand’s or item’s performance, track F&B sales in real time and identify potential labor or product shortages before they materialize.
The tool is built on Databricks and resides within Worden’s smartphone. He can track in-game sales performance — it used to take 30 minutes to produce and print out an in-game report — while the platform texts him alerts regarding situations that need his attention.
The platform divides the ballpark into 12 quadrants and produces heat maps showing sales volume from the different food and drink outlets. The heat mapping tool delivers forecasting accuracy between 95% and 99%, improving operational efficiency and reducing waste.
“Not only did we study those to understand where we wanted to put the markets based on sales, but it provides us with real-time data so that we can make adjustments in-game,” Worden said.
Click below to hear from Sportservice team members about how the company partners with the Reds to use data analytics to enhance the fan experience: