The New York Mets have been working with Dedrone, a company that looks to protect venues from malicious drones and is providing technology to secure the airspace at Citi Field.
“That happens to be one mile from a major airport, which is LaGuardia Airport in New York,” Dedrone VP of marketing Pablo Estrada noted on a webinar last month. “And actually (the Mets’) challenge is aerial security of the stadium not only during baseball events, but they have high-profile events there such as music concerts and similar events. And they deployed the Dedrone solution not only with RF sensors, but also video cameras. And they do cooperate very closely with their local police department. And thus, each drone intrusion is recorded and handed off to the local police department for further investigation — or at least ones that they deem that are worthy for follow-up. They’ve actually been running the solution for some time now and have had pretty good success protecting their airspace at Citi Field.”
The Dedrone platform connects to sensors and video cameras attached to the ballpark’s infrastructure, enabling the Mets since April 2016 to detect and identify a drone, track its flight path back to the pilot and record video evidence for further investigation, SportsBusiness Journal reported.
“The Mets’ security people were getting reports of one to two drones a month,” Bobby Long, Dedrone’s vice president of sales, told SportsBusiness Journal. “They invested a small amount of money to figure out if they had a bigger problem. What they found out was actually one to two drones a day in their airspace.”
Dedrone has worked with a Northern California government intelligence and security agency to protect a Golden State Warriors championship parade, according to a spokesperson. The company also works with football teams and stadiums. Its other sports account is with an unnamed Big 12 Conference school, SportsBusiness Journal reported.
In Major League Baseball, which prohibits drones at ballparks, a drone crashed into the stands at Petco Park during a San Diego Padres game last season. No injuries were reported. No charges were filed.
“This was a guy working on his own blog going around San Diego videotaping or recording images,” San Diego Police department officer Billy Hernandez told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “He was flying it over Petco Park and lost control of it.”
As drones have become popular among consumers, there have been safety concerns about those devices being used for terrorism, surveillance and hacking.
Drone invades @Dbacks – @Padres game and makes a crash landing in the stands. pic.twitter.com/OaOcPTACLM
— FOX Sports Arizona (@FOXSPORTSAZ) May 21, 2017