Networking

Delivering the Smart Stadium Experience for College Football Fans

Attendees expect the same frictionless experience at sporting events that they expect everywhere else on campus.

Tony DiGrazia is a higher education sales director at CDW.

Every football fan has seen it happen. A head coach, burning with competitive fire, lashes out at a defenseless victim: his headset. Or an innocent tablet is slammed into a table by a coach sickened by even the sight of the device. The catalyst for the violence isn’t always the same. It could be a mistake made by a player, anger at a referee, disappointment in a fellow coach or, sometimes, it’s the technology itself.

Technology is a part of the fabric of college football, from the tailgate to the crowd to the sidelines, and colleges and universities supporting football programs must be prepared to deliver the kind of frictionless, connected experience fans, players, broadcasters and even coaches have come to expect everywhere they go.

Just this year, in fact, the National Collegiate Athletic Association approved the optional use of communication devices putting coaches’ voices directly in a student-athlete’s helmet and permitted the use of tablets for in-game video review, adding yet another layer to the complex connectivity required in college football. (Both practices have been standard in professional football for several years).

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In response to the need, technology vendors are creating tools that promise increased worker efficiency and fan satisfaction, including AI-powered applications like the one being used at The Ohio State University to direct fans to the concession stands and bathrooms with the shortest wait times.

And those are just two of the uses for cutting-edge technology that could be coming to a stadium near you, along with all the infrastructure, data storage and security concerns that accompany a new tool. At CDW, we’ve worked with vendor partners in this space for years, and at stadiums and arenas of all shapes and sizes, including in the National Football League. Here’s just some of what we’ve learned:

Fans Expect a Frictionless Experience Everywhere

The experience of attending a college football game is one-of-a-kind. The pageantry, the sense of school pride and the exhilaration of competition create an atmosphere cherished by fans, alumni, students and the sometimes tens of thousands of other people who pack into the largest venues. But even at smaller universities and in other sports, like at the record-smashing women’s volleyball match held last year at the University of Nebraska, giving the fans an experience they want to come back for is paramount.

That’s because tightly packing fans into athletic venues faces stiff competition from the alternative, usually sitting at home on a couch and tuning into the broadcast on TV. In that case, fans have the world at their fingertips on their phones, tablets or other devices, and never have to wait in line for a snack or to use the restroom.

That’s where this wave of stadium technology comes in. Real-time data analytics help fans find those short bathroom and concession lines, move them through the parking lot and past the entrance gates without interruption, and help universities understand fan behavior. They transmit information instantly to a giant video board or update digital displays at concession stands with real-time pricing and availability. They offer Wi-Fi or 5G networks to keep fans browsing on their phones during stoppages in the action, or to order food and drinks directly to their seats. They reinforce internal communication channels for everyone from team personnel to security and, of course, make sure those tablets and headsets stay connected, lest an angry coach or player smashes them in a fit of pique.

Today, in almost every setting, people expect the same access to connectivity and their devices that they enjoy at home, even when they’re out of the house. College football is no exception.

Nothing Matters Unless Stadium Connectivity Is Strong

Few environments higher education IT teams encounter place a greater strain on wireless networks than large-scale events. Anytime thousands of people are in a confined space, density on the network is going to skyrocket and the network needs to be able to handle it.

Wi-Fi 6E is intended to meet that increased density demand, and with recent regulatory changes opening up the 6 gigahertz band for outdoor use, a move to 6E could make all the sense in the world for a university looking to upgrade its stadium network.

Of course, it’s also not that simple. Universities may need or want multiple networks to keep essential communications (safety and security), game operations (ticketing and in-stadium production), concessions, team use (coach headsets) and more segmented to their own channels, although simpler is usually better as any network admin knows.

There are also use cases for 5G or LTE networks, and networks may be public, private or somewhere in between. Putting, for example, a QR code on the back of a ticket that fans scan for wireless access and pairing that with location tracking can keep a semiprivate network from becoming too overloaded.

Then there’s the matter of securing those networks, figuring out how to manage them, organizing and securing the data collected by the various stadium apps, and future proofing for whatever’s coming down the road. Our higher education team at CDW has expertise in all those areas and can help you build a smart, secure and connected campus that includes all the Saturday crowds hopefully arriving this fall.

This article is part of EdTech: Focus on Higher Education’s UniversITy blog series.