Not long ago, ballclubs installed scoreboards so fans could, you know, see the score. The fancy ones had graphics that would rival the video game “Pong.”

How quaint.

In 21st century sports, high-definition stadium video boards are a crucial part of the show, and come March 25, when AT&T Park opens for a spring training game against the A’s, fans are going to see the Giants’ bid to wow them with bigger, bolder and brighter video.

In a $10 million project, the most the Giants have spent on a single capital improvement since the park opened in 2000, the team is replacing its scoreboard in center field, which was state of the art when installed in 2007. The new one will cover 10,700 square feet, more than three times the surface area of the one it replaces.

The old Mitsubishi Diamond Vision board, which has been disassembled, was the fifth smallest and second oldest being used in the 30 major-league stadiums.

Bill Schlough, the Giants senior vice president in charge of the project, said the new board, also built by Mitsubishi, will be the third largest in the majors, behind Cleveland and Seattle, and the biggest at any California sports venue. Moreover, it will feature far more pixels and less space between them than the old one, making the image much bolder.

“It’s going to blow people away,” Schlough said.

Nowadays, that’s required.

Ballgames are expensive. Tickets, parking, concessions and souvenirs can be costly, while flashy HDTVs have become less expensive, making the allure of watching at home stronger than ever.

Giving fans one more reason to go to the ballpark is the prime motivator for teams in this arms race for the best visual experience.

“It’s about getting them to come back,” said Jay Parker, a vice president of Daktronics Inc., a company based in South Dakota that constructed the video systems at 23 current big-league parks. Daktronics had hoped to build the new AT&T Park board but lost out to Mitsubishi.

“You can’t always predict how a team is going to do on the field, but you can certainly predict how to entertain them on a high level,” Parker said. “If your team is not performing the way you want to, you want to give them an entertainment value that has them wanting to come back.”

The Giants might feel more urgency to enhance the fan experience as they compete for finite fan dollars with the Warriors, who next fall will move in down the street at Chase Center, which promises to wow with technology.

“The Giants have done a magnificent job keeping AT&T fresh and current,” said Andy Dolich, a Los Altos-based sports business consultant who has no ties to the team. “Now they have a performance challenge, which they haven’t had much in the last eight or nine years, and they have a new neighbor building one heck of a house.”

The Giants are competing with the Warriors for ticket sales, luxury-box revenue and sponsorships while the ballclub is faltering on the field and the basketball team is on a historic run of three NBA championships in four years.

Comparing the old and new at AT&T Park 2007 scoreboard New scoreboard Screen Lamp-based Surface-mount diodes Manufacturer Mitsubishi Mitsubishi Dimensions 31 feet high, 102 feet wide 70 feet by 153 feet Pixel pitch (distance between pixels) 20mm (0.79 inches) 10mm (0.39 inches) Pixel resolution 960 x 3,136 2,160 x 4,672 Source: San Francisco Giants

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A baseball-industry leader in attendance, the Giants ranked fifth in the majors with more than 3.16 million tickets sold in 2018, but paid attendance was down about 150,000 from the year before and more than 220,000 from a park-record 3.39 million in 2011.

Now, two consecutive losing seasons and a roster rebuild could erode attendance further as memories of three World Series titles in five seasons grow dimmer. The issue is not just fewer tickets sold, but also more no-shows, which cuts into spending within the park.

The Giants have ancillary reasons to replace their video board. For one, older systems become harder to maintain as the years go on, and AT&T Park has a unique issue with salty marine air damaging electronics.

But Schlough said the biggest reason for investing $10 million in a new display is making the ballpark more entertaining and marketable. He does not view the Warriors as the Giants’ biggest competitor.

“Our biggest battle is with the couch,” Schlough said. “We need to give fans another reason to come to the park when they’ve got an 80-inch TV on their wall. We’ve got to continue to rival that experience at the ballpark as well.”

The new Mitsubishi board will be the third at AT&T. When the park opened in 2000, the Giants installed two systems side by side, a low-tech, black-and-white scoreboard alongside a video display that fit the 4:3 aspect ratio of old televisions. Today’s stadium boards are much wider, just like TVs at home.

Giants fans will notice the difference as soon as they walk into the ballpark. The new board will fill the entire width between the two outfield light standards and replace the fixed advertising signs that ringed the old board. Those placards now will be affixed to the light standards.

It also will rise twice as high as the old board.

Besides presenting flashier video, the Giants will be able to display more advanced stats that fans like to see, such as the launch angle and distance of home runs, or how fast an outfielder ran to chase a flyball.

The demand for higher-tech video boards has helped Daktronics become a $600 million company and one of South Dakota’s largest employers. It built the current HD display at the Oakland Coliseum. The A’s say the preliminary design for their proposed Howard Terminal ballpark does not include scoreboard specs.

Parker said the technology has become much cheaper than 20 years ago, when AT&T Park was built, which also is driving the industry and the demand for bigger, better boards. Dolich said human nature also comes into play.

“Since sports to a certain extent mirrors society, you see your neighbor got a 64-inch, HD, LED, smell-o-vision TV, you think, ‘We better get one, too,’” he said.

Some teams are even willing to go to court to build big video boards. The Chicago Cubs installed a large video board above the right-field bleachers at Wrigley Field after winning a three-year legal battle. Owners of some rooftop bars that sold seats atop apartment buildings across the street argued the video structure blocked their views.

The Cubs touted their two new video boards — one in left field, the other in right — as a key component of a $575 million expansion of Wrigley, which was built in 1915.

The need for video entertainment is more acute in baseball because the sport has so much dead time between pitches and innings. When the action dies down, Parker said, “you don’t want the fans sitting there doing nothing.”

Henry Schulman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: hschulman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hankschulman