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Stadium Tech Report: Niners President Marathe confident that Levi’s Stadium network, apps will deliver as promised

May 30, 2014 by Paul Kapustka

Niners president Paraag Marathe (center) at Intersport Activation Summit panel.

So, Paraag Marathe — will the network at Levi’s Stadium live up to its considerable pre-launch billing and be ready to go when the stadium opens later this year?

“It better work, since we’ve been talking about it,” said Marathe Friday, during a panel discussion at the Intersport Activation Summit presented by SportsBusiness Journal/Daily in San Francisco. “We better be right.”

Even though the short history of in-stadium networks suggests that any new endeavor be launched with words of caution, Marathe and the San Francisco 49ers are instead confident — very confident — that their new stadium will launch with a network second to none, and have game-changing services like food and beverage delivery to seats and on-demand instant replay that will redefine the game-day experience.

Paraag Marathe, president, San Francisco 49ers

In both his panel discussion at the Ritz-Carlton hotel and in an additional interview afterward, Marathe provided some additional details about plans the Niners have talked about previously for the technology features at the new stadium, which is located in Santa Clara, Calif., smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley. Though Marathe said the stadium’s location — quite literally next door to several high-tech company campuses — made technology “part of the DNA,” he stressed Friday that the Niners are seeking to use technology to improve the fan experience, and not just to have cool stuff.

“It’s not technology for technology’s sake,” Marathe said. “It’s to enhance being at the game.”

But he did add that the stadium’s Wi-Fi network will be the base for much of the innovation.

Wi-Fi is ‘the master key’

An under-the-seat access point. Credit: Aruba Networks

The Wi-Fi network, which Marathe said “will absolutely be working” when the park opens, is “the master key that unlocks everything,” he said. Currently being built with Wi-Fi access point gear from Aruba Networks and back-end network equipment from Brocade Networks, the Levi’s Stadium Wi-Fi network will also have twin 10-Gigabit broadband pipes provided by Comcast to provide what Marathe said will be throughput “30 times more than any other stadium.”

Marathe said the Wi-Fi network is being built with what he calls a “spider web” of access points, though neither the Niners nor Aruba have yet said just how many access points will be used to create the network. There will also be a neutral-host cellular DAS at the stadium, built by DAS Group Professionals (DGP). Already, DGP has signed up the “big four” carriers of AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile, to use the DAS at the stadium.

What will the networks be used for? Marathe outlined four main points of technology innovation during his talk, including high-definition, on-demand replays via the new Niners stadium app; in-seat delivery of food and beverages to every seat; way-finding features to perform tasks like locating friends, finding parking spots, and to tell which bathroom lines are shortest; and paperless tickets, based on RFID and near-field communication to fans’ devices. Of the four, the replay idea and the food-delivery service stand out as massive technical and industrial challenges.

Promised: Better replays than those on TV

If there is one promise that has many in the stadium technology industry shaking their heads, it’s Marathe’s pledge of Levi’s being able to deliver “better replays than what the coaches are seeing,” since team coaches only get to see replays provided by the network broadcasts. The Niners, Marathe said, will have “a massive [internal] production crew” working on the replay feature, since replays not only need to be picked out of the video stream, they also need to be coded to work over the Internet and to be delivered to handsets. Though Marathe admitted that the video quality may dip a bit below true HD if a lot of fans try to watch replays at once, he told the conference crowd that the Niners’ stadium app is going to deliver “HD, slo-mo [replays] within seconds after a big play.”

While other stadiums, like Barclays Center in the NBA, use technologies like Cisco’s StadiumVision Mobile to deliver separate “channels” of live video and replays, Marathe said the Niners’ app will allow fans to choose their own replays and when they want to watch them. “If you have a [replay] channel, you’re subject to whatever is on that channel,” Marathe said.

The food-delivery feature, Marathe said, is more than putting a menu in an app — “it’s an immense industrial engineering exercise,” he said, to figure out things like how many runners are needed and when and how food needs to be prepared. In addition to food delivery — an option he said will be available to every seat in the 68,500-seat stadium — the Niners will also have “express pickup” lanes for digitally placed orders at concession stands, an idea that Marathe said helps eliminate or significantly reduce two of the three things that make concession interactions a time-consuming act.

“There’s decision time, transaction time, and preparation time,” Marathe said. “If you can eliminate two of three variables, that’s a few more minutes fans have to watch the game.” Waiting until fans show up at a stand to prepare the food will help keep the order fresh, he added.

Wayfinding, paperless tickets and the 9-Nerds

If there’s one idea that’s already gotten a lot of press, it’s the plan to have wayfinding technology assist features like the one that will let fans know how long the bathroom lines are. Marathe said the idea was to make it simple — “red light, yellow light, green light” — to let fans know that if they have to go, it might be faster to try the bathroom one section over.

“We’re really just trying to be smart,” said Marathe. Other wayfinding apps might include a parking-spot locator, or a friend-finder feature.

The fourth area where Marathe wants Levi’s to innovate in is paperless ticketing, which he said wouldn’t be 100 percent this year but it will eventually get there. A future scenario described by Marathe might use RFID or near-field communications to let fans simply walk through a gate without having to show a ticket or even a bar code to be scanned. Some ski areas, like Aspen and Vail in Colorado, already use such technology to let skiers get on lifts without having to show anyone their RFID-equipped lift tickets.

“The idea is to have greeters who can actually greet you” when you walk in, and perhaps extend a personal offer for discount goods purchases or seat upgrades, Marathe said. “It’s a more human interaction,” fueled by technology.

Wi-Fi coach in the stands at Gillette Stadium. Credit: Extreme Networks

Finally, to help fans figure out how to use the new network and apps, Marathe confirmed plans previously reported by Mobile Sports Report to hire a crew of “network coaches” to roam the stands. According to Marathe the coaches will be called “9 Nerds” (say it quickly) and will likely be college students, dressed in what Marathe called “Poindexter outfits.” The Niners are looking to hire 150 such network helpers, which would be the largest such crew we’ve heard of in the stadium networking marketplace.

“They’ll stand out,” Marathe promised.

Lots of network use — and a team ready for its launch

With all the hype about the network, Marathe expects that Levi’s Stadium wireless usage will far eclipse that at other stadiums, where often far fewer than half of the fans in attendance actually ever use things like Wi-Fi or stadium apps.

“Forget 10 percent [fan network use], we’re going to see something higher,” Marathe said. Even people who don’t have digital devices, he said, will probably borrow one “just to bring it to Levi’s to test it out.”

When asked why his team was so confident — in an industry where under-promising seems to be a sensible way to go — Marathe said that both the Silicon Valley heritage and the greenfield nature of the building gives the Niners and Levi’s a technological edge.

“Five years ago, we put together a kind of think tank with VCs and design people, and thought about what would be useful [at a new stadium], well before we ever put a shovel in the ground,” Marathe said. And even though the Niners’ CTO left the team earlier this year, Marathe is confident that his crew of 25 engineers (which he said also still gets some consulting help from the departed CTO, Kunal Malik) will deliver the network and apps as promised.

Having advanced technology in the new stadium, Marathe said, “was our mandate — the DNA of the building is all these tech companies that are around us. It’s who we are.”

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, DAS, MSR Guides, NFL, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Aruba Networks, Brocade Networks, Cal, California, Cisco, Comcast, DAS, DAS Group Professionals, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, NFL, Paraag Marathe, San Francisco 49ers, Santa Clara, stadium apps, Stadium Wi-Fi, Stanford, Super Bowl 50, video replays, Wi-Fi

Stadium Tech Report: Comcast says Niners planning for 100 percent fan usage of Levi’s Stadium Wi-Fi network

February 25, 2014 by Paul Kapustka

Even as some other sports teams across the country are facing lower than expected usage of their in-stadium wireless networks, the San Francisco 49ers are planning for full capacity use of the Wi-Fi in their new Levi’s Stadium, according to the company supplying the back-end bandwidth.

“Many stadiums plan for 10 to 15 percent [of fans] using the network,” said Mike Tighe, executive director of data services at Comcast Business, in a recent phone interview following the announcement that Comcast would provide some huge pipes — twin 10 Gbps Ethernet fiber lines — as part of its Wi-Fi sponsorship deal with the Niners and Levi’s Stadium. But the Niners, Tighe said, know that their new stadium is a different beast, located smack dab in the middle of super-connected Silicon Valley. As such, Tighe said the team is building a network designed to support a connection from each and every one of the 68,500 possible fans who can fit in the new facility.

“The Niners know the Valley is a tech center, and they are planning for 100 percent of users [on the network],” Tighe said. The new stadium is located south of San Francisco in the city of Santa Clara, the headquarters location of many high-tech companies, whose always-connected workers are expected to be a huge part of the new stadium fan base. Though the team may never truly see 100 percent network use, it is a good bet that Niners’ crowds will be significantly heavier wireless users than the norm. That’s why Comcast is providing the twin 10-gig connections, which Tighe calls “the fattest pipes we offer.”

Comcast’s stadium expertise expanding

Over the last year or so, Comcast has built up an impressive resume of stadium-backhaul deals, with contracts that include bringing business-class services to the stadiums of the Denver Broncos, the Boston Red Sox and Boston Celtics, the Washington Nationals and the Oakland Athletics. Comcast, with headquarters in Philadelphia, also supplies bandwidth and Wi-Fi to the Philadelphia 76ers at Wells Fargo Arena and to the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park.

As providers of the service that eventually connects fans to the Internet, Tighe and Comcast have a front-row seat to the ever-expanding use of mobile devices at stadiums and arenas. One of the selling points of an Ethernet connection is its ability to rapidly scale upward, something Tighe said sports teams are rapidly learning about, especially if the team does well on the playing surface.

The Boston Red Sox, for instance, had a 100 Mbps Comcast connection, but then the team made the playoffs and network demand surged, Tighe said. “The good thing was, we were able to upgrade [the link] to 1 Gig in a week,” he said.

One new twist to wireless networking in stadiums is the need to equally support upload and download traffic, something Tighe said is much different than traditional cellular or wireless deployments, where download traffic was typically as much as five times as big as upload traffic. In stadiums it’s much different as fans spend a lot of time snapping pictures and videos and uploading them to friends or to social media websites.

“People in the stadium are content publishers,” Tighe said.

More stadiums are learning about networking demands

While some stadium tech representatives are still underestimating their potential network capacity needs, Tighe sees a general uptick in the technical knowledge base as more fans arrive with big-screen smartphones and tablets on game days.

“Everyone [in the stadium tech business] is learning and becoming more and more tech-savvy,” Tighe said. “They know people are coming to the stadium with phones and tablets, and expect to view plays from different angles and see replays.”

And when it comes to stadium networks, there may not be a more-anticipated opening than Levi’s, which is scheduled to open its doors to soccer games this summer ahead of the Niners’ season this fall. Tighe is confident that the network — and its backhaul — will change minds as to what is possible in the stadium networking market.

“When people see what the Niners have done it’s going to cause a lot of teams to rethink the fan experience,” Tighe said.

Filed Under: Comcast, MSR Guides, NFL, Wi-Fi, Xfinity Tagged With: Comcast, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco 49ers, Santa Clara, Stadium Wi-Fi, Xfinity

Adobe research finds mobile sports viewing driving huge growth in digital video

February 4, 2014 by Paul Kapustka

One namesake trend we focus on here at Mobile Sports Report — watching sports online or on mobile devices — is the primary driver of the continued worldwide growth in digital video consumption, according to the latest comprehensive study put together by software giant Adobe.

In the Adobe Digital Index Benchmark Report for Q4 2013, the survey looked at digital video, spanning 2012 and 2013 and using aggregated and anonymous data from more than 600 media and entertainment sites. According to Adobe the survey analyzed 22.5 billion online video starts, half a billion mobile video starts as well as 574 million authenticated streams from cable providers’ “TV Anywhere” implementations. The survey also asked 400 sports fans about their viewing habits. While there’s lots of chewy bits to digest, the killer line from the research says, in part: “The trends outlined in this report clearly demonstrate that sports viewing is the engine behind digital video growth.”

Well WE could have told you that. But it’s nice to see solid data backing up our directive assumptions.

Just how potentially big is online and mobile sports viewing? While the Adobe report is just one (albeit comprehensive) set of data, some points jump out, like the one that found that sports video streams increased 640 percent, year over year, compared to an overall growth of 440 percent for all types of content. On the TV Everywhere side, sports events accounted for 37 percent of all streams, compared to 32 percent for news programs and 28 percent for TV shows. Again, no surprise to us: People like the ability to watch sports live, whenever they can. And mobile devices help them do just that.

Campbell Foster, director of product marketing for Adobe Primetime, the company’s TV publishing infrastructure platform for service providers, said the data back up what many other industry observers have noted about sports: It is engagement viewing that fans don’t want to miss, so they use whatever device they can to watch.

“The nature of the content [in sports] is perishable, so sports is something people want to watch live,” said Foster, in a phone interview to discuss the report’s findings. Another nugget from the report is that one quarter of all sports digital viewing now happens on mobile devices, a 73 percent year-over-year increase. And though tablets lead all forms of non-TV devices for video viewing, streams on smartphones and gaming consoles are also growing rapidly, a finding we take as meaning that the top of mobile and online viewing is a long way away.

Some other interesting points from the report include:

— Facebook leads the way with social referred video starts
— Half of visits referred from Facebook or Tumblr to sports related sites result in a video view (vs. 39 percent for YouTube, and 25 percent for Twitter)
— Most video starts come directly from search to branded sites, with social referrals accounting for just 6 percent of all streams
— Apple iOS devices are still killing the competition, with more than a 50 percent market share

It will be interesting to see how other industry outlets react to the Adobe report, which we think has the chance to become the online video industry’s informational equivalent of the Cisco Visual Networking Index. At the very least, Adobe’s attempt to quantify the surge of online sports video use we see in our reporting and analysis every day is admirable, and it puts some stakes in the ground for further discussions about audience value, ROI of mobile, and potential new businesses that can be crafted from the idea that a new audience type is not only emerging but continuing to expand.

Adobe chart showing growth in sports streams. (click for larger view)

Breakdown of video streams for TV Everywhere (click for larger view)

Filed Under: Apps, Cisco, Comcast, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption Tagged With: Adobe, Adobe Digital Index, digital sports video, digital video consumption, live sports on mobile, Mobile Sports Report, mobile sports viewing, Paul Kapustka, viewing sports online

Winter Olympics Online offerings grow with Comcast move

January 28, 2014 by Paul Kapustka

If you are a subscriber to Comcast’s cable service and use its Xfinity TV X1 set top box and are a fan of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi, there is great news for you as the carrier has agreed to live stream all of the events.

NBC has been making a great deal of news with its big expansion of streaming Olympic events and extra programming, so this is really no real surprise since Comcast is the majority owner of NBC, but it had not publicly committed to live streaming the events to its customers.

It plays out pretty much as expected based on the previous NBC announcements. 1,000 hours of Olympics competition will be streamed live from the games in Sochi, Russia. The online content will be double that which is broadcast over the air by NBC and its four cable partners.. Then there will be 200 hours available on video on demand.
There are a few interesting wrinkles in the broadcasts. If you come late to watching an event you can get the video on demand to start at the beginning. An interesting social media hook is a feature called ‘SEEiT” that allows a user to tune into events that are generating large amounts of tweets by simply clicking on the SEEiT button embedded in some tweets.

Comcast has said that the streaming video will be available for phones and tablets as well as connected televisions.

While in the short term this is a great fan of Olympic sports, the bigger picture is even better. With a great number of sports broadcasts now handled by regional and national cable networks their ability to broadcast to remote mobile devices is very important.

Comcast has said that it is using this opportunity to both familiarize its customers with these capabilities and as a test bed to see what works well with its established customer base. Hopefully it can start branching out with other sports, but of course that will take some doing for the major ones that already have some sort of streaming services in place, at least for NFL and MLB broadcasts.

Filed Under: Apps, Comcast, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, NBC Sports, NFL, Olympics Tagged With: Comcast, NBC, Sochi, Winter Olympics

Comcast to power free Wi-Fi at Niners’ new Levi’s Stadium

January 23, 2014 by Paul Kapustka

Who’s got better Wi-Fi than we do? Nobody! Under terms of a 10-year deal announced today, cable giant Comcast will provide backbone services and free Wi-Fi to the San Francisco 49ers’ new Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., scheduled to open this summer. The wide-ranging agreement, which also will see Comcast providing in-stadium video and Internet services as well as voice services for the stadium operations, includes an on-site studio where Comcast’s regional sports network will produce shows, invariably including a lot of 49ers-based content, especially on game days.

No terms of the deal were announced, but for fans who want to stay connected at Levi’s, the twin 10 Gbps backbone pipes Comcast will bring in should be sufficient bandwidth even if everyone in all 68,500 seats fires up an iPhone, iPad or Android device. The sponsorship deal also answers one of the questions surrounding the Niners’ ambitious networking plans for Levi’s, mainly how they were going to pay for their robust Wi-Fi. Answer: They’re letting Comcast foot the bill, partially in exchange for the rights to control video feeds to all of Levi’s extensive digital displays.

The mission for Levi’s Stadium has always been to create an unparalleled gameday experience through the use of innovative technology,” said 49ers CEO Jed York in a prepared statement. “Comcast is the perfect partner to help us achieve that goal, as the services they provide will allow our fans to customize their individual stadium experience through the use of their own mobile devices.”

“Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Levi’s Stadium will feature new and exciting ways for the team’s fervent and tech-savvy fan base to experience a live event, from ubiquitous WiFi to innovative mobile applications and rich video content,” said Bill Stemper, President, Comcast Business, in the same press release. “This partnership is representative of how Comcast, by deploying our full suite of consumer and business products, can deliver reliable, high-capacity Internet connectivity for fans, media and stadium employees while supporting various multimedia initiatives.”

Comcast now joins a growing list of technology sponsors for the Niners’ new digs, including software giant SAP, networking hardware vendor Brocade, semiconductor giant Intel, and TV maker Sony. What should be interesting is to see how the Niners’ deal with Yahoo over digital content either conflicts or doesn’t with the new Comcast deal.

While there’s probably still room for more vendors on the sponsor train, the Comcast deal is a huge one when it comes to the big question facing a lot of stadium owners and operators these days, namely how do you pay for Wi-Fi and other networking installments? The answer here is, find a dedicated partner who already does this for a living and who also has a related business — a regional sports network — that can also benefit from a close relationship.

Filed Under: Comcast, Intel, NFL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Comcast, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco 49ers, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi

Stadium Tech Report: DAS, Wi-Fi puts end to no-signal problem at Denver’s Sports Authority Field

January 10, 2014 by Paul Kapustka

These days, Denver’s Sports Authority Field at Mile High is the new home of the NFL’s most prolific signal-caller. With a record season for passing yards and passing touchdowns, Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning is recognizable for his animated pointing, shouting and line-of-scrimmage audibles, the ultimate practicioner of last-second communication.

Not too long ago, the fans at Mile High might have had to resort to the same tactics to communicate, using hand waving or shouting, since getting a cell signal was next to impossible. “Forget making a phone call, you couldn’t even send a text,” said Rick Seifert, communications manager for the Broncos’ stadium management company. “And it wasn’t just the fans. We [the staff] couldn’t make calls in the stadium to do our jobs.”

But in 2012, the Broncos changed all that with the installation of a full-featured distributed antenna system (DAS) deployed by TE Connectivity, and a fan-facing Wi-Fi network installed by Verizon Wireless.

Russ Trainor

The Broncos also put in a huge new digital scoreboard and robust back-end connectivity provided by Comcast as part of their blitz of networking improvements, and this past fall, AT&T joined in by upgrading its connection to the stadium’s DAS. By next year the Broncos hope to add AT&T and Sprint to its roster of Wi-Fi service providers, reflecting what vice president of information technology Russ Trainor sees as a “never ending growth” of wireless in-stadium consumption.

All carriers on board, slowly

One of the biggest problems with DAS deployments in stadiums is convincing major cellular carriers to work together. Since each carrier wants to deploy systems to do the best job for its customers, there is often a difference in opinion on strategy and operations, which is often followed by similar snags in contract negotiations. Trainor said that the stadium, built in 2001, presented unique RF challenges to wireless with its primarily exposed-steel construction. Verizon and Sprint were the first carriers to sign up for the neutral DAS, followed by AT&T this fall.

DAS equipment at Sports Authority Field. Credit: Denver Broncos

“It was tough to get them [all the major carriers] to agree on DAS, but we have good engineers on the back end and we came up with a nice solution for everybody,” said Trainor. While the antennas and stadium network are neutral, each carrier provides its own back-end gear, much of which at Mile High had to be placed in a building built outside the facility specifically to house telecom gear. In many stadium DAS deployments, the telecom gear can take up thousands of square feet, which can be challenging to find in facilities built before such needs were known.

“There’s no room inside for all the space they [the carriers] wanted,” Seifert said.

The Wi-Fi network, deployed by Verizon, uses Cisco equipment and is also a neutral host infrastructure, meaning that other carriers could use it to provide Wi-Fi connectivity to their clients if they so choose. According to Seifert, AT&T and Sprint will offer Wi-Fi services to customers next season, in part to answer the consistently growing demand. Like in other stadiums, fans at Sports Authority Field know what to do when they finally find bandwidth: Use more.

Steady growth in wireless use

When Sports Authority Field is at its listed capacity of 76,125 on game days, it becomes the 14th-largest city in Colorado, Trainor said. The team has already seen 525,000 downloads of its mobile application, which provides such in-stadium features as four different video replay angles, a connection to the NFL Network’s RedZone channel, and a direct link to the radio feed from hometown sports station KOA. The application is geo-fenced to ensure that the video rights are only used inside the stadium, and to give fans there a unique game-day experience.

Wi-Fi antennas on stadium overhang. Credit: Denver Broncos

According to Trainor, the team usually sees an average of 4,000 simultaneous connections on the Verizon Wi-Fi network on game days, though on colder days when fans need to wear gloves that number can drop in half. Trainor said the Cisco infrastructure is designed to accomodate 25,000 concurrent connections, a number the team hasn’t yet reached. However, the team did have to double the back-end capacity already for the Wi-Fi network, which is being used more as more fans find it.

“Word of mouth really gets [usage] going,” said Trainor, who noted that at a Kenny Chesney concert last year, the stadium crew saw data uploads outpace data downloads for the first time — a sure sign that fans in attendance were using the network to do things like share pictures and videos with their social-network connections.

“We haven’t seen any true bottlenecks yet, but usage is consistently rising, game after game, for concerts, soccer and football,” Trainor said.

Rick Seifert

A good sign from the Wi-Fi networking statistics is a shift in usage from the often crowded 2.4 GHz bands to the 5 GHz bands, which Trainor said is likely due to fans using the latest 5 series iPhones, which support the 5 GHz Wi-Fi frequency. And no matter what happens to the Broncos in the playoffs, Trainor and Seifert know what they will be doing this summer: Upgrading the network components, in the never-ending battle to provide bandwidth.

“Verizon and Sprint have already made significant upgrades to their DAS deployments because of demand and changes in technology, like LTE,” said Seifert. “And next year we’ll probably see AT&T circle back again. It’s very dynamic.”

“As smart phones get smarter it’s a never-ending challenge” to provide connectivity, Trainor said. “It’s a job that’s never finished.”

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apple, Apps, AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, DAS, Denver Broncos, Denver Broncos, MSR Guides, NFL, NFL Network, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T, DAS, Denver, Denver Broncos, Mobile Sports Report, NFL, NFL Network, Paul Kapustka, Peyton Manning, RedZone, Sports Authority Field, Sports Authority Field at Mile High, Sprint, Stadium Tech Report, Stadium Wi-Fi, Verizon Wireless