Phillies unveil, explain reasoning for new out-of-town scoreboard

It’s out with the old and in with the new in right field at Citizens Bank Park as it celebrates its 20th anniversary, even if that means ditching a signature aspect of the ballpark.

A brand-new, 2,000-square-foot LED video board has replaced the original out-of-town scoreboard that extended across the stadium’s right-field wall. With movable nameplates for each opposing team, fixed basepath outlines and colored light bulbs to indicate outs and runners, the previous out-of-town scoreboard stood from 2004 until this offseason as its throwback design became a staple in South Philadelphia.

Sean Walker, Phillies vice president of technology services and chief technology officer, introduced the scoreboard on Monday afternoon and explained how the club came to the decision to add the digital field-level display at an event showing what’s new for the 2024 season at Citizens Bank Park’s Pass & Stow restaurant.

“We’ve been really talking about it over the last couple years,” Walker told Phillies Nation, “trying to determine the best way to maintain the feel of the ballpark while enhancing our fan experience visually and the need for more content space on that side of the park.”

After debuting a new 152-foot-tall, 86-foot-wide digital video board in left field last season, the Phillies moved to replace the right-field scoreboard, which included retro-style fixtures to post out-of-town scores for every game going on across Major League Baseball on the day of each Phillies game. It included room for two permanent advertisement boards — one down the right-field foul line and one in right-center field.

There were also two digital boards that could show videos, ads and statistics such as pitch type and pitch speed on a rotating basis.

The new, fully digital video board in right field has more space for replay and introductory clips (with better quality than before), stats and, of course, ads. Seven ads were shown on the board during Monday’s event, each separated by a faux-brick display, with a limited out-of-town scoreboard showing four matchups. When the regular season rolls around this week, a good portion of that space will be dedicated to advanced stats.

“I think there’s just a lot more screen real estate to work with from a baseball statistics standpoint,” Walker said. “We’ll be able to do more advanced stats that’ll work well with the right-field (scoreboard), as well as the left field. Certainly, it benefits those that are looking at right field that maybe don’t have as good of a view of the current big board, but it’ll really enhance it for everybody.”

Walker declined to reveal exactly what stats the new board will show on a regular basis, saying that the list is being finalized and that fans can see it on Opening Day on Thursday. The Phillies started leaning into the use of advanced statistics in the ballpark last season on their left-field scoreboard, with some early shuffling of the metrics they’d use.

Citizens Bank Park will no longer have a consistent posting of every game’s score on every single game day as it did with the old board. The team wants to modernize its right-field scoreboard with the mix of stats, videos and ads it’ll show, moving away from the full-schedule arrangement that had been there since 2004. Instead, the new addition will keep “some out-of-town scores rotation” with an emphasis “on the games that matter more to the Phillies.”

“Not necessarily at all times,” Walker said of showing each out-of-town score, “but certainly often enough that the fan won’t be missing out. We’re also in a different era, right? Out-of-town scores are available on everyone’s mobile device, so most people are getting alerts as it happens. It’s not as critical as it was in a previous era.”

Of course, it’s no longer 2007 when fans relied on the out-of-town scoreboard to let them know the Marlins were beating up on the Mets on the last day of the season to open up the path for the Phillies to claim the National League East title. Just about everyone at the park has a phone in hand, able to search up the score of any game across baseball. But the same can be said about advanced statistics, a leading priority in this change at the stadium for the Phillies. A simple search on Baseball-Reference, FanGraphs or BaseballSavant will tell a fan almost any stat the team would show them on the scoreboard.

Sure, the old out-of-town scoreboard was antiquated in a way. It couldn’t fit extra ads and stats in the playoffs when most of the other teams stopped playing. By the end, it no longer served as a primary source of information, but a symbol of Citizens Bank Park’s retro-classic design and a backdrop for Phillies memories — whether it was Jimmy Rollins’ walk-off double in the 2009 NL Championship Series to Nick Castellanos catching the final out of the NLCS in right field 13 years later.

It’s not hard to imagine that certain fans will miss the original out-of-town scoreboard and the old-time feel it brought. But with a brighter display, clearer video and more information, the Phillies are confident that the trade-off in right field will be worth it. Fans can decide for themselves at “the Bank” starting Thursday.

“We were very conscious of keeping Citizens Bank Park in its fan-friendly state that it is,” Walker said. “But, given all the factors, we decided that this was a good way to enhance the fan experience without too much of a departure from the original stadium. … Over the course of 20 years, lots of capital improvements have been made, and we believe this is one of those.”

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