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How the Warriors and Accenture will use 'invisible' tech at new stadium

The NBA’s Golden State Warriors have been called Silicon Valley’s sports team. The team is owned by a group of venture capitalists, counts big-name tech entrepreneurs like Marc Benioff of Salesforce and Eddy Cue of Apple as big fans, and plays in an arena named for Oracle.

But come 2019, the team will move from its current Oakland arena to one in San Francisco named for Chase—and it’s only fitting that the technology at the $1 billion Chase Center will match the team’s reputation and fan base.

Accenture will be the exclusive tech partner of the Warriors and the Chase Center moving forward, the team and the consulting giant announced this week. And the pressure is on for Accenture to make the new arena a glitzy, high-tech basketball mecca.

To kick off the partnership, Accenture will give every attendee at the Warriors game on Thursday night a Google Cardboard virtual reality set, which lets users strap in their smartphone and watch VR video clips. Available 3D clips will include one of Warriors star and two-time MVP Steph Curry shooting his warmup routine, and one that puts the viewer on the hardwood during player introductions.

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But Julie Sweet, North American CEO of Accenture, says that being the tech partner for the team and their next arena, “is really not about tech for tech’s sake. It’s about having technology enable an incredible experience for the fan, not just for Warriors games, but for all the different activities that will be at the arena.”

Warriors president and COO Rick Welts takes it one step further: Yes, the Chase Center will have all the fastest and hottest new tech, but, “The more invisible the tech component is, probably the better we’ve delivered that service. Nobody goes home at the end of a game and says, ‘Boy, I loved that tech.’ They say, ‘I loved that experience.'”

What kind of bells and whistles, besides virtual reality, might fans expect at the Chase Center? Accenture and the Warriors aren’t sharing many specifics. But Sweet says, “We are going to be re-imagining every part of the experience and using technology to make it the most exciting experience a fan can have.”

To some sports fans, it might sound overwhelming. And the Warriors would be wise to take a page from the San Francisco 49ers’ book.

The NFL team, also a Silicon Valley resident, opened up its huge new home in Santa Clara, Levi’s Stadium, in 2014. It was hailed as the sports stadium of the future, but in its opening events the food-ordering from the seats had some glitches, and the lightning-fast wi-fi was patchy. Those issues have long since been resolved, but come 2019, the Warriors, Accenture, and Chase should anticipate some tech hiccups at the beginning.

Nonetheless, “We are going to take every aspect of our guest experience and really deconstruct it… and reassemble it,” says Welts. That’s just what any sports-fan techie expects these days. “Any fan that comes to our building, especially where we live in Silicon Valley,” Welts adds, “is dependent on that to enhance their experience.”

Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite. Sportsbook is our recurring sports-business video series.

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