Wi-Fi, new app features a welcome addition at historic Saratoga Race Course

Horses round the turn at Saratoga Race Course. Credit all photos: Saratoga Race Course.

Just because a sporting venue is old and historic doesn’t mean it has to stay behind the times. The welcome arrival this year at the famed Saratoga Race Course of a high-density Wi-Fi network and a new mobile app with services including live video, express food ordering and mobile betting was a winner for all fans, according to racetrack executives.

“I’m pretty proud of Saratoga — we’ve got history, tradition, and now the 21st Century,” said Bob Hughes, vice president and chief information officer for the New York Racing Association, which runs thoroughbred racing at the Saratoga Springs, N.Y.-based Saratoga as well as at Aqueduct Racetrack and Belmont Park. The new Wi-Fi network, which was fully installed for Saratoga’s 2017 season, “was a wild success for us,” Hughes said. “The fans were engaged, and the media noticed.”

Saratoga’s summer schedule — a tradition in upstate New York since racing first happened there in 1863 — is one of the more revered happenings on the horse-racing schedule, and the Race Course grounds are widely admired as one of the best experiences in sports. But up until a few years ago, that experience didn’t have much in the way of wireless connectivity, an issue Hughes said the NYRA started working on to correct after the 2015 season.

More mobility for race fans

With an executive direction to bring more mobility, access and convenience to fans, Saratoga started down the path that ended with a network using 220 Ruckus access points, Kezar scanners and a new app designed by VenueNext, and 1,000 bluetooth beacons from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, to support wayfinding and other services. With more than 48,000 client user sessions on one of the summer’s busiest days — the Aug. 26 Travers Day — and an average of more than 1 terabyte of traffic each day, the new network at Saratoga was an instant hit, and something likely to keep the old venue even more relevant to a new generation of racing fans.

“The New York Racing Association was pleased this year to introduce cutting edge technology to Saratoga Race Course, the oldest active sporting venue in America,” said NYRA CEO and president Chris Kay in a prepared statement. “Given our ever growing reliance on mobile devices, these improvements are critical to the long-term success and sustainability of Saratoga.”

The unique schedule of Saratoga — 40 days of racing in the summer — also means some long days of races, with fans at the track from before noon until 7 p.m. some days, Hughes said. With the new network and app in place, those fans can not only stay connected to their outside lives, but they can also watch live and archived racing videos, pre-order concessions for express pickup, and even place bets from their mobile device.

“With 25 or 30 minutes between races, you now see a lot of people watching replays of former races” to gain betting insights, Hughes said. And that connectivity even extends from the racetrack seating areas out to the track’s famed picnic grounds, where Hughes said Saratoga deployed “mushroom” looking AP enclosures that put antennas at waist level, to bring connectivity close to the seating areas.

From the more than 1 million fans who attended races this season, Hughes said the Wi-Fi network saw pretty consistent take rates of 25 percent of fans present on the network at any given time. Having that wireless connectivity to outside lives as well as to tap into venue amenities, Hughes said, “takes any stress away.”

Churchill Downs picks VenueNext for new Kentucky Derby app

Screenshot of new Kentucky Derby app built by VenueNext for Churchill Downs.

Screenshot of new Kentucky Derby app built by VenueNext for Churchill Downs.

Fans at this year’s Kentucky Derby will be able to find their way around historic Churchill Downs and place bets on races via a new venue mobile app, designed by VenueNext, the app developer for Levi’s Stadium and other football, baseball and basketball teams.

Most of the standard features of the VenueNext app platform, including interactive wayfinding and digital ticketing support, will be available to all fans for the May 7 Derby Day, according to Churchill Downs Racetrack general manager Ryan Jordan. Additionally, a small number of premium-seat ticketholders will be able to order food and drink for delivery to their seats via the app, a sort of “beta test” of one of the other VenueNext app services that Jordan said Churchill Downs plans to expand for future races.

“We’re very excited to roll this app out” on Derby Day, said Jordan in a phone interview. Though the racetrack has previously had some mobile apps, Jordan said they were mainly focused on the social element of the event, with links back to the Derby website. The VenueNext-powered app infrastructure, he said, “really translates well to our venue and we think will significantly improve the fan experience at the Kentucky Derby.”

Ryan Jordan, general manager, Churchill Downs

Ryan Jordan, general manager, Churchill Downs

For VenueNext, the big-name deal is its first outside of stadium sports, and the sixth app deal overall, following deals for apps for the San Francisco 49ers, the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Yankees, the Orlando Magic and the Minnesota Vikings. VenueNext also designed a special Levi’s Stadium app for the recent Super Bowl 50.

Wayfinding, betting, and more

One of the top features from the VenueNext app package that “excites” Jordan is the app’s ability to use a beacon infrastructure to support a live interactive wayfinding map, where app users can track themselves in “blue dot” fashion similar to Google maps for driving. Since Churchill Downs is an old, sprawling facility, Jordan said that helping fans find their way was always a challenge.

“There’s been 142 years of building this place out, and it’s not like a bowl stadium where you can just keep walking in a circle to find things,” Jordan said. “To be able to use a mobile app to find your seats, find your car after the race, and find amenities like betting windows is very exciting. We have lots of signage, but there are lots of different buildings and signs, and it can be hard to find your way around.”

For several years now, the Derby has been building its own mobile betting app, which allows fans to place bets from anywhere at the track. That app, called Twinspires, is now also integrated within the new VenueNext app, which means that fans don’t have to exit and find another app to place wagers.

Wayfinding map screenshot

Wayfinding map screenshot

To make sure fans can stay connected anywhere on the grounds, Churchill Downs and partners Mobilitie and AT&T upgraded the venue’s DAS again this offseason, adding more capacity for AT&T 4G LTE services. Though Churchill Downs does have a small amount of Wi-Fi for the main buildings like the clubhouse and the towers, Jordan said that service is mainly for race days other than the big event.

“For regular race days [when fans are mostly in the main buildings] we may have 10,000 to 20,000 people here,” Jordan said. “For the Derby, we will have 170,000.”

Starting slow with food delivery

Also included in the app is the ability for fans to order food and drink to be delivered to their seats, or to be picked up at an express window at a nearby concession stand. Jordan said that during the offseason Churchill Downs retrofitted several kitchen areas to support the delivery and express pickup options, but that the track will start small with the service and expand from there. In addition to the Turf Club and its 500 seats where delivery will be an option, another 15 sections of seats will be able to use the app for express pickup orders, Jordan said.

“There’s a lot of employee training and infrastructure [for deliveries] that’s new to us,” said Jordan, explaining the start-slow approach. “The good news is, there’s lots of opportunity to keep expanding as we go.”

(more app screenshots below)

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AT&T: Kentucky Derby DAS traffic doubled from last year, hits 5.1 terabytes

The iconic twin spires of Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. Credit all photos: Churchill Downs

The iconic twin spires of Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. Credit all photos: Churchill Downs

An upgrade to the Mobilitie-run DAS at Churchill Downs let AT&T record record wireless traffic at this year’s Kentucky Derby, as horse racing and hat fashion fans used 5.1 terabytes of cellular data over the racing weekend, according to AT&T.

The total wireless traffic (which is only AT&T customers on AT&T networks) for the events including the Friday Kentucky Oaks race as well as the first leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown, the Kentucky Derby or Run for the Roses on Saturday, May 2, was more than double last year’s total of 2 TB of overall traffic, according to AT&T. This year’s gathering also saw a new AT&T record for the most data used in a specific hour on an AT&T in-venue mobile network during any sporting event, when 474 GB of data crossed the AT&T networks between 5 and 6 p.m. Eastern time during Saturday’s races.

AT&T did not specify what it exactly did to upgrade the Churchill Downs DAS, but it did say that it also deployed a cell on wheels (COW) to help with the traffic crush from the 170,513 fans who watched the race. The hour-long record, which happened just before the race’s start, included data only on the in-venue DAS network, AT&T said.

Stadium Tech Report: Churchill Downs picks a winner with Mobilitie DAS

The iconic twin spires of Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. Credit all photos: Churchill Downs

The iconic twin spires of Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. Credit all photos: Churchill Downs

Move over, Super Bowls — there’s a new wireless-traffic event king on the U.S. sports landscape, and it’s one that’s been around longer than anything else. Thanks to a new distributed antenna system installed this year at historic Churchill Downs, fans at the recent Kentucky Derby were able to set single-event wireless traffic records, at a place where not too long ago getting a decent signal on your phone was a longshot at best.

According to Churchill Downs Racetrack general manager Ryan Jordan, up until last year cellular connectivity was a pain point at the historic facility, which opened in Louisville, Ky., in 1875. Though recently cellular providers tried to address the smartphone crunch by bringing in technology like COWs (cellular towers on wheels), the spread-out nature of the track and its architectural challenges made the COWs an unsatisfactory solution.

“The temporary COWs really couldn’t handle the traffic,” said Jordan in a recent phone interview. In post-race surveys, he said, the track heard complaints about connectivity, as did the cellular carriers.

“We heard it [the complaints] and the carriers heard it,” Jordan said. “But we never had a solution to handle the problem.”

In 2013, however, Churchill Downs enlisted infrastructure provider Mobilitie to deploy a neutral-host DAS to bring better cellular connectivity to the entire facility. While the deal was struck too close to last year’s race to allow for a full buildout, by this year’s 140th running of the “Run for the Roses,” a full-scale, 253-antenna DAS was in place to produce some winning results. According to AT&T, the Churchill Downs DAS carried event-record traffic over the Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks weekend, with a total of 2 Terabytes of overall traffic and a peak hour of 180 Gigabytes of traffic, in the 60 minutes just before the Derby race on May 3.

Ryan Jordan, general manager, Churchill Downs

Ryan Jordan, general manager, Churchill Downs

By comparison, during the most recent Super Bowl at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, AT&T saw a peak hour of 119 GB of traffic before kickoff, and 624 GB of total traffic on game day. Of course, some of the specifics of the Kentucky Derby make the big numbers easier to understand, including the 160,000 fans on race day as well as the full day of attendance, which featured less than a half-hour total of actual horses running fast. It’s important to note that the Derby figures are for AT&T traffic only, and do not include any potential traffic from Verizon Wireless customers, whose carrier also used the Mobilitie DAS to improve reception at the track.

“Derby Day is 13 races, each about 2 minutes long,” Jordan said. “When you figure out that the gates open at 8 a.m. and the Derby doesn’t start until 6:30 p.m., that’s almost 12 hours [of fans in attendance] and only 26 minutes of action.”

In other words, there’s a lot of time for selfies and other Internet activity.

Bucket list pictures, and race handicapping

Like the Super Bowl and other big sports events, the Kentucky Derby is a “bucket list” type of happening, one made even more receptive thanks to the see-and-be-seen nature of the event.

“People spend a lot of time taking in the things that make [the Derby] special, like hats, fashions, and the singing of ‘My Old Kentucky Home,’ ” Jordan said. “It’s the kind of event where people take pictures and send them to their friends to show them what they’re missing.”

Jordan said that in addition to social media activities, many fans at the track used the new DAS connectivity to try to improve their betting odds, using the Internet to help them handicap the races. (Churchill Downs also has a small amount of public Wi-Fi available only in the main building, used mainly to support an on-site mobile betting application.)

In previous years, fans at the event might not have been able to perform all those wireless functions. If the decision to upgrade the communications was an easy one, the decision to go with a “neutral” third party partner like Mobilitie came from a desire to serve all wireless customers equally. Though wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon can and do act as lead contractors for many DAS deployments, the negotiations to get each carrier what it wants in terms of antenna deployments and other technology needs can get complex in a hurry.

“We know how to put on a great event,” said Jordan of the Derby’s owners and operators. For communications, Jordan said, the track sought out a firm with an equal amount of smarts and reputation in their field.

“We wanted to find someone who was an expert in the conversations [with carriers],” Jordan said, “and to make sure our system could cover as many of our fans as possible.”

Old buildings a challenge for new technology

Among the challenges encountered by Mobilitie at Churchill Downs were some structures dating back to the 1890s, including the iconic twin spires structure, which Jordan said dates back to 1895.

“Some areas have a lot of concrete and steel, and then there are seating areas open to the outside with enclosed dining rooms behind them,” Jordan said. “There were a lot of things for Mobilitie to design around, and it wasn’t easy for them. But walking around the facility, you don’t see a lot of large antennas. Everything is pretty discreet. We’re very pleased with Mobilitie. It was a great win for us.”

Preakness gets online streaming extras via NBC Sports Live Extra

Screen Shot 2014-05-14 at 2.33.28 PMWith a solid showing in the Kentucky Derby, winner California Chrome looks like the best bet for a Triple Crown in years. And thanks to NBC’s Sports Live Extra feature, horse racing fans can get live streaming coverage of Saturday’s second race of this year’s Triple Crown series as well as online extras that include four isolation camera views and archive footage and replays of related topics like the Kentucky Derby race.

Basic race info: The live broadcast of the 139th Preakness Stakes starts at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time this Saturday, May 17, from Pimlico track in Baltimore. Broadcast coverage is on NBC.

As usual, you need to be a validated cable subscriber to watch NBC Sports Live Extra either online or through the mobile device app of your choice. I don’t have any empirical proof to back up the next statement, but from watching a lot of Stanley Cup playoff action via NBC Sports Live Extra online it seems like the NBC crew is really getting its act together in terms of delivery. I haven’t seen any buffering errors or frozen screens in a long time, and let’s hope it stays that way.

If you feel the need to vent your opinions on all things Preakness NBC is also hosting a social media sharing center, cleverly located at NBCSports.com/Preakness.

Churchill Downs taps Mobilitie for DAS upgrade ahead of Kentucky Derby

horseTexting and calling on Kentucky Derby day should work a lot better for fans at the legendary Churchill Downs racetrack this weekend, thanks to a recent doubling of the facility’s DAS infrastructure.

According to infrastructure deployer Mobilitie, the 140th running of the Derby and other associated races is expected to attract more than 260,000 fans to the Louisville, Ky., home of perhaps the world’s most famous thoroughbred event. With coverage improvements that Mobilitie said effectively doubles the capacity of the previous distributed antenna system (DAS) installment, fans should have better cellular coverage in more areas, including the track’s parking lot and other outside areas.

A Mobilitie press release said that the upgraded DAS will cover all six levels and basement in the Churchill Downs main building, and will also cover all of the grandstands, the parking areas and the newly installed Grandstand Terrace. In addition, Mobilitie said new coverage will also support temporary hospitality suites as well as the entire infield area. Mobilitie said the DAS system is one of the largest in the country, with more than 253 antennas and over 1 million feet of fiber optic cable installed throughout the venue. So far, AT&T and Verizon Wireless have signed on to use the DAS, which means that for this year at least most wireless customers will have access to improved connectivity. According to Mobilitie, both carriers’ 4G LTE signals will be supported by the neutral DAS.

FastBet app screen shot

FastBet app screen shot

“Since 2003, Churchill Downs has invested $160 million into improving the onsite customer experience for guests attending the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby,” said Ryan Jordan, general manager of Churchill Downs, in a prepared statement. “A major part of the live event experience is ensuring that fans maintain connectivity to their social networks. As a result of the upgrades that Mobilitie made this year, our guests with smartphone service from participating carriers will be able to share those memorable experiences as they happen live with their entire network.”

Fans at the race can also use smartphones to bet on the races via their mobile devices, using the track’s Wi-Fi network that covers a large segment of the main building’s stands and suites. According to the Churchill Downs website, the FastBet Mobile system only works on the track’s Wi-Fi network, most likely due to security and billing requirements. A map shows which areas of the stands are covered by Wi-Fi.

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