Levi’s Stadium, where the Broncos and Panthers will tangle in the Golden State’s golden anniversary Super Bowl, bills itself as the most technologically advanced stadium in the world. How could it be otherwise for the newest home to an NFL team right in the heart of Silicon Valley? Sitting just a mile from corporate sponsor Intel’s headquarters, with hundreds of other tech giants nearby, it’s only natural that the stadium is probably the best connected facility of its kind in the world. As I wrote last year, Levi’s is like a small data center masquerading as a football stadium and blanketed with wireless coverage for both fans and employees, including those all-important people on the sidelines.
For Super Bowl fans all that technology means never missing a play and getting the same isolation shots and replays on the stadium smartphone app as views at home on their 60-inch flat screens. Why bother squinting at the Jumbotron when you’re already holding an HD screen? Long cognizant of the ubiquity of HDTVs and 5-inch smartphones, the NFL’s goal isn’t to compete with broadcast media, but to give fans the best of both worlds: an exciting, unique live experience, without sacrificing the intimacy and analysis of a TV production.
Let’s look at how the fans attending Super Bowl 50 will stay connected and the technology behind the scenes that ensures they won’t be looking at spinning wait cursors when they're trying to share sights from the game on Instagram.
- 1,200 access points saturate Levi’s Stadium with Wi-Fi coverage with enough capacity for at least 20,000 concurrent connections. All are dual-band and will automatically steer capable clients like recent generation iPhone and Galaxy S models to the high frequency, higher-capacity 5 GHz band.
- The APs connect to a network core that segregates wireless capacity for separate applications, ensuring that high priority endpoints like security cameras, point-of-sale systems, the press box and sideline networks don’t get overrun by general stadium traffic. We’re assuming the network admins double check the cables to the sideline APs this week. In total, the stadium’s wired network uses 400 miles of fiber.
- The stadium normally connects to the Internet through a 40 Gbit circuit: that’s 40 Google Fibers. We don’t know if additional capacity was installed for the game, but it’s likely, so these numbers are probably low. On a typical game day, the stadium’s network operations center handles 500 terabytes of data: that’s the equivalent of almost 170,000 Netflix HD movies.
- Fans don’t always connect to the stadium Wi-Fi network, so Levi’s is also covered by auxiliary cell phone receivers. Known as direct antenna systems (DAS), dozens of these provide direct connections to all the major carrier networks from within the stadium.
- Before the game, a crush of visitors will be Vining, Snapchating and Instagraming from throughout the Bay Area. Away from the stadium, Verizon has tripled LTE capacity in areas like downtown San Francisco, the three Bay Area airports and major hotels where fans are expected to congregate, adding enough to support a million extra visitors. This required installing 16 large cell towers, 75 small cell sites and 25 DAS locations, including inside advertising kiosks on Market Street. Overall, Verizon increased capacity 50% over last year’s Super Bowl, which only seems natural for Silicon Valley’s bowl.
- Although the game will be available for live streaming, we wouldn’t recommend fans broadcast one of their own on Periscope. The NFL closely guards its broadcast copyright and while it hasn’t announced a formal policy for fan streams, one report says that stadium network engineers can “not only detect streams, but also to locate a stream’s origin in the stands.”
As I wrote last year, enhancing the in-stadium fan experience is a strategic imperative for the NFL. “Mobile enhancement of the game experience extends beyond the on-field action to in-stadium amenities like food ordering with express pickup or in-seat delivery, mapping and directions helping fans navigate the facility, even a traffic report telling fans how long the lines are at the bathrooms.”
Super Bowl 50 promises to be most connected, app-ready game in history, but making it work requires a lot of technology and engineering. If you are lucky enough to have tickets to the game, take a moment to give thanks to all the engineers, app developers and technicians that made your 5-bar connections possible. You’ll have plenty of time for gratitude as you’re waiting for the train, bus or car taking you back to the hotel.
