Creating all-round experiences for baseball fans (and non-fans) through precinct activation in Asia

This article is the final piece in a three-part series looking at how Asia’s baseball stadiums are inspiring a new generation of players and fans.  In Part 1, Associate Principal Seungho Lim in Seoul discussed how stadium design is keeping up with fan expectations and in Part 2, Senior Principal Mako Ihara in Tokyo looked at how local culture influences ballpark design.  As Mako noted, part of this approach involves bringing fans both physically and emotionally closer to the experience where the line between sport and entertainment can often become blurred.  Here, I take this concept one step further and look at how ballparks are becoming anchors for a broader precinct, where the line seamlessly blends game day excitement with diverse activities, creating vibrant hubs for entertainment and community engagement. Regardless of the location, baseball globally is more than a game – it’s an entertainment experience. Ballparks and the broader precincts around these venues are adapting to meet this experiential diversification for fans and non-fans alike. 

Throughout my international career, I’ve collected and catalogued different experiences to form a picture of how great sports infrastructure design is influenced by user experience and how user experience is influenced by people’s interactions with well-designed sports infrastructure.  This exciting pull of the venue to create a sense of excitement broader than the game itself, and the push by the venue to create a more holistic and community focused experience, is where the next generation of baseball fans in Asia want to be and where clubs and venue owners can extend their reach to non-fans. 

Growing up in Sydney I started playing baseball when I was about five years old, which back in the early 1990s was not a common thing to do in Australia, but I loved it. The smell of the dirt, the crack of the bat; I was hooked, and I have continued to play baseball for a good chunk of my life.  Early in my architecture career, I had the amazing opportunity to move to the U.S to work on a number of Major League Baseball (MLB), Minor League and college ballpark projects, including some of the world’s most iconic ballparks such as Atlanta Braves’ Truist Park, Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Field and San Diego Padres Petco Park. But more recently, spending time in Asia as part of Populous’ local design team on Jamsil Sports MICE Complex in Seoul, South Korea. I’ve seen how different cultures experience gameday in different ways. From North American tailgating to Japanese cheering sections and swinging back down to suburban clubs in Australia, there is no doubt that baseball is a community sport at its very core.  

In parts of Asia, it is common to play baseball inside domed stadiums. Even though this is less common in traditional US ballparks, the climate, extreme weather conditions and additional economic opportunities that are unique to their location drive the need for these projects to create enclosed multipurpose venues. This subtle difference between ballparks versus baseball stadiums is a growing trend we are seeing more of across the Asia Pacific.  

Taiwan’s first-of-its-kind integrated mixed-use sport and retail development, Taipei Dome, is an indoor baseball arena designed by Populous that is located in the center of the capital, Taipei City.  The Dome includes a 40,000-seat covered baseball arena and more than 200,000m² of integrated themed retail, offices and apartments and a hotel on a historic site. The arena has direct views to the old Songshan Tobacco Factory, which is an integral part of the wider development.  

While sport might be the main draw that brings people to the venue, the precinct is well connected to the rest of the city by direct access to a bus terminal below and an adjacent subway. Combine this with the myriad of other activities on site, this allows gameday visitors to spend the whole day building their unique experience. 

Truist Park is the perfect example of ballpark precinct activation, forming the centrepiece of the wider Battery Atlanta development, a new neighbourhood 30 minutes from downtown Atlanta. It’s a destination in itself, with 60 bars, restaurants, shopping precincts, hotels and a 3600-seat Live Nation concert hall. Populous worked closely with the master planners of the development to ensure that the ballpark would integrate seamlessly with the buildings surrounding it, creating a fan experience that set the bar for ballpark districts in the US. 

For me, working on Truist Park, I saw many similarities between the sense of community that this project was designed around and the community culture that Asian society is built on.  The ballpark was designed to appeal to every kind of baseball fan, ranging from hardcore Braves devotees to casual fans wanting to hang out with friends on a sunny day. Truist Park weaves together local gameday traditions with modern technologies to create a fan experience unlike any other. From the Coors Light Chop House to the Xfinity Lounge’s rooftop patio to the first zipline and climbing tower in a major league ballpark, there’s something for every generation of fan. Truist Park sets the bar for Southern hospitality, recognising that not all gameday experiences happen in the stadium itself. 

In fact, not all ballpark experiences are gameday experiences.  What happens to the venue when there isn’t a game?  In many densely populated Asian cities, there are space limitations where venues need to be truly multipurpose so they can work harder and cater for different experiences at different times of the year. 

More and more, we’re seeing that these venues are being used for events other than their original purpose.  Originally designed for baseball, they now need to accommodate pop concerts and other musical and stage shows. Taipei Dome’s multipurpose design is capable of hosting 58,000 fans in concert mode, much more than the 40,000 baseball fans on gameday. We anticipate that Jamsil Dome, primarily designed as a dual home team baseball venue for the Doosan Bears and the LG Twins of the KBO, will also host a large volume of concerts throughout the year. Additionally, fans will have the opportunity to stay overnight at the adjoining hotel, which offers uninterrupted views into the field of play from your room. 

Venue owners want to have the greatest commercial return on their facilities and are therefore trying to find new and creative ways to utilize the sites 365 days a year. The Populous designed Petco Park is a great example of a venue that embraces and connects with the local community. It does this through the use of the “Park at the Park” concept beyond the Center field wall. This unique space provides community amenities such as bars, restaurants, a stage, wiffleball field and a kid’s playground. This dynamic space combined with the ballpark becomes more than just a stand-alone venue; it becomes part of an entertainment precinct where you have the major venue anchor adjacent to a smaller venue that forms part of the broader district, which can be used on non-event days or even before, during or after the game itself.  

Essentially, a venue should grow as its team and fanbase grows and the fanbase should grow with the venue. This is currently not always the case with many venues in Asia since many of these developments were designed based on available government funding at the time and not around the commercial needs of the expanding home team or the needs of a growing entertainment sector.

The venues we design in Asia must be adaptable to work at a range of capacities for a range of different types of sport and entertainment in different seasons and for different weather conditions.   

Whether you’re attending a game to watch your baseball heroes, whether you’re wanting more of a retail experience, or whether you’re going to see your favourite band, your experience is more likely to be one where you can enjoy all of these things in the same location. The future of ballparks in Asia is one where baseball fans and non-fans have a reason to visit the ballpark.  This will give clubs the opportunity to attract new fans and grow the sport by drawing people together who wouldn’t normally attend a game, and it will give fans the opportunity to extend their gameday (or any other day) into an all-round experience where sport and entertainment combine.