AT&T Park – Page 3

Half a stadium using Wi-Fi? 2014 World Series games set Wi-Fi records at AT&T Park

October 28, 2014 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Though this year’s World Series still isn’t over, the three games this past weekend in San Francisco set new local records for fan Wi-Fi use, arguably cementing AT&T Park’s title as baseball’s best-connected stadium.

One of the more stunning numbers provided to us by Bill Schlough, the senior vice president and CIO for the Giants, was that nearly half the crowd in AT&T Park for Sunday’s Game 5 used the Wi-Fi network — a “take rate” we’ve never heard of before at any sporting event of any kind. According to Schlough the Giants’ Wi-Fi network had 20,638 unique users during Game 5, a take rate of 49.7 percent. (According to the official box score, the attendance that night was 43,087, give or take a Panda or four.) The game also set an AT&T Park record for Wi-Fi upload traffic with 747 Gigabytes of data being sent by people at the park out to the network.

(Including one special photo tweeted out by a former Giant you may have heard of.)

Hanging With @kanyewest @KimKardashian @SFGiants Game time Yes Yes Yes⚾️⚾️⚾️⚾️⚾️@BondsPat pic.twitter.com/82xaSl9Hlb

— Barry L Bonds (@BarryBonds) October 27, 2014

A record for downloaded Wi-Fi traffic, of 937 GB, was set during Friday night’s Game 3, and the record for a combination of download and upload traffic was set during Game 4, with a total of 1.62 Terabytes. According to Schlough, the total data transferred during the eight games of the 2014 postseason at AT&T Park was 10.3 TB, which is easily the high-water mark for any baseball stadium network we know of. (The total does not include regular cellular traffic carried by the AT&T Park DAS; we will add those numbers in when they become available.)

And while individual games such as Super Bowls or contests down the San Francisco Peninsula at Levi’s Stadium may set higher overall marks (thanks in part to having more fans in the building), we’d be interested to see if any other stadium networks can match AT&T Park’s season-long data number of 59.3 TB, which according to Schlough represents total traffic over 2014’s 91 games (regular and postseason) at AT&T Park.

One more fun number from Schlough: Since the park turned on its fan-facing Wi-Fi network in 2004, there have been 4,085,518 Wi-Fi connections during the 946 game days. Kansas City’s Kaufmann Stadium, which just got its Wi-Fi network installed recently, has one or two more games this season to start trying to catch the Giants from a networking perspective.

UPDATE: Looks like the Royals are claiming some already-decent usage of their Wi-Fi network:

Almost 100K fans have utilized it during our recent testing and tuning, but now it’s official: free RoyalsWiFi available at #TheK!

— Kansas City Royals (@Royals) October 28, 2014

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, Cisco, DAS, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T Park, DAS, Kansas City Royals, MLB, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco Giants, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi, World Series, World Series Wi-Fi

Reports: Free Wi-Fi now available at Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium for World Series

October 22, 2014 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

According to reports from Kansas City, the previously Wi-Fi-less Kauffman Stadium now has a working free Wi-Fi network for fans, apparently installed recently by Major League Baseball’s advanced media group. Though we haven’t yet received any official confirmation about the network’s launch from either the Royals organization or from MLBAM, two separate sources confirmed that free Wi-Fi is available in the stadium, and apparently has been for a few weeks now.

In our reporting about MLB Wi-Fi deployments for our Q2 Stadium Tech Report, we found that Kauffman Stadium was one of 10 MLB parks not yet offering Wi-Fi for fans in the seats. But since this spring MLBAM has publicly said that it plans to help install Wi-Fi in the remaining parks that need it, including helping to pay for the deployment if necessary. One possible reason for the speedy deployment at Kauffman could be the joint marketing deal between Apple, MasterCard and MLBAM to promote the use of the new Apple Pay service, which is being offered at both Kauffman Stadium and AT&T Park during the World Series. San Francisco’s AT&T Park already has Wi-Fi, a service the Giants have offered fans since 2004.

Though a thorough search of the Kansas City Royals’ team website shows no mention of Wi-Fi services available at Kauffman stadium, one Twitter user has reported finding a free “speedy” Wi-Fi service at recent playoff games there, and another visitor to the park for yesterday’s World Series opener also reported a live Wi-Fi service available to fans. Another tipster has told us that the network uses Cisco Wi-Fi gear, but again, nothing has yet been officially confirmed.

Anyone lucky enough to have a ticket to tonight’s Game 2, send us a Wi-Fi speedtest if you can…

Filed Under: Apple, Baseball, Cisco, Fox Sports, iPhone, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Apple, AT&T Park, Kansas City Royals, Kauffman Stadium, MasterCard, MLBAM, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco Giants, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi, World Series

Giants: NLCS stadium Wi-Fi usage at AT&T Park quadrupled since 2012

October 21, 2014 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Giants senior VP and CIO Bill Schlough, at the office

If you build a better stadium network, they will come… and use it even more. That’s what the San Francisco Giants are finding out, with stadium Wi-Fi data usage more than quadrupling this year compared to the last time the Giants were in the NLCS in 2012.

According to Bill Schlough, senior vice president and CIO for the Giants, fans at AT&T Park for the recent National League championship series with the St. Louis Cardinals used more than four times the Wi-Fi data that fans used in the 2012 series. Schlough said that in 2012 (also facing the Cardinals) fans at the four AT&T Park NLCS games used an average of 302 Gigabytes per game; this year, in the three games in San Francisco, that number was 1,247 GB per game.

What makes the jump in data even more interesting is the fact that the number of overall users of the Wi-Fi network only increased about 19 percent from 2012 to 2014, with an average of 16,683 users on the network this year compared to 13,509 in 2012, according to figures from Schlough and the Giants. “It definitely shows how data per connection is what is really exploding,” said Schlough in an email.

Looking back another couple years is also instructive; in 2010, during the NLCS the AT&T Park network only saw an average of 6,511 fans using Wi-Fi per game. (The team did not track data usage at that time.) Though the World Series starts today in Kansas City, fans will have to wait until Game 3 in San Francisco Friday to use Wi-Fi since the Royals’ Kaufmann Stadium is one of the 10 MLB parks that don’t have fan-facing Wi-Fi.

White box at bottom is one of the under-the-seat Wi-Fi access points at AT&T Park.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, DAS, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T Park, Kansas City Royals, MLB, Mobile Sports Report, NLCS, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco Giants, St. Louis Cardinals, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi, World Series

AT&T Park networks averaged 1.24 Terabytes per game during NLDS

October 14, 2014 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

As the San Francisco Giants get set to host the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 3 of the NLCS today (weather pending!) we can be reasonably assured that AT&T Park’s wireless networks will be able to handle whatever load the fans throw at them. According to AT&T, the park’s DAS and Wi-Fi networks carried an average of 1.24 Terabytes of traffic for the two most recent postseason contests, the NLDS games against the Washington Nationals on Oct. 6-7.

According to a recent AT&T local blog post, the DAS network at AT&T Park carried an average of 314 GB of traffic between the two games, with a high of 338 GB on the Oct. 7 game. Remember, these stats only reflect traffic of AT&T customers at the park — the actual total of DAS traffic would include usage from customers of Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint, but none of those companies have (ever) reported DAS traffic usage. Still, the AT&T number is pretty impressive all by itself.

On the Wi-Fi side, AT&T said there was an average of 926 GB of data used per game — again, impressive when you consider that AT&T Park is a baseball stadium that only seats about 41,500 folks when it’s sold out. Since the Wi-Fi network is free and open to any wireless service customer, the 926 GB number reflects total data use. Combining the two gives you a figure of 1.24 TB average traffic per game. Now let’s see if Giants fans top that number this week.

UPDATE: We just got some fresh stats from AT&T for Tuesday night’s NLCS game at AT&T Park, and no surprise, more data was consumed. According to AT&T the fans at the Oct. 14 afternoon game used 1.38 TB of total data, with 1,067 GB on Wi-Fi and another 318 GB on the cellular DAS (remember those stats are AT&T customers only on the DAS). We’ll do another roundup after the three games are played this week to get averages.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, DAS, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: AT&T, AT&T Park, DAS, MLB, Mobile Sports Report, NLCS, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco Giants, Sprint, St. Louis Cardinals, Stadium Wi-Fi, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi

Dallas Cowboys, AT&T add more tech to AT&T Stadium, add fuel to ‘most-connected stadium’ debate

August 21, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 5 Comments

AT&T Stadium, North Texas, USA

During last Sunday’s first “real” football game at Levi’s Stadium, I was asked several times if I thought the San Francisco 49ers’ new home was the “most connected” venue ever. I hesitated and hedged my answer a bit, because when it comes to wireless networks and tech innovations I think AT&T Stadium — home of the Dallas Cowboys — needs to be mentioned in the same sentence as Levi’s.

This week AT&T and the Cowboys announced more enhancements to AT&T Stadium’s already powerful network, and a new toy for fans to interact with. First on the network side, AT&T said from last summer until now it has increased the capacity of the stadium’s DAS by 50 percent, with 1,300 DAS antennas now in place. On the Wi-Fi side the stadium now has more than 1,500 access points, which may be the most in any stadium anywhere, to the best of my knowledge. (According to the Niners’ press guide, Levi’s has 1,200 Wi-Fi APs.) Throw in the big TV hanging from the center of the roof and AT&T Stadium has to be part of any discussion about “the most connected stadium” in football, if not in all of sport.

AT&T Stadium’s new “Fan Experience Board” in louvering position. Credit all photos: AT&T/Dallas Cowboys.

(I’d also include AT&T Park in San Francisco in that argument, which has somewhere north of 1,200 Wi-Fi APs in a much smaller venue; from what we hear the two AT&T-sponsored stadiums have a friendly competition when it comes to tech deployments.)

On the new-toy side it should be fun to see the new 130-foot “AT&T Fan Experience Board” in action — according to AT&T and the Cowboys this contraption is built of 40 mirrored louvers which can rotate in sync, and can show ads, fan pictures and will also be part of what the team and AT&T are calling the “Unite this house” feature on a new fan app. We’ll let the Cowboys blog explain how this will work, on plays where Tony Romo is throwing to teammates instead of to opponents:

The “Unite the House” fan interaction feature on the app will alert fans at pivotal moments of the game through their mobile devices. As the stadium app vibrates, a message will be displayed providing the particular context and immediacy of the action. Fans will be guided to unlock their phones, hold their fingers on the Dallas Cowboys star and as more phones power up, the stadium will be full of strobes, not only from mobile devices, but also on the ribbon displays and the HD video board. The visual will gain intensity and speed as more fans join in, energizing the stadium and culminating in a final eruption of light and motion provided by the louvers that will canvas the entire stadium.

AT&T Stadium interactive screens

AT&T and the Cowboys also announced some large interactive screens — the Cowboys blog called them “life-sized iPhones” — where fans can swipe to learn more about Cowboys players, or Cowboys cheerleaders. Our guess is that both will be immensely popular. At Levi’s, there are some interactive displays and features — one, sponsored by Yahoo!, asks fans to answer trivia questions. While it’s neat to see these things emerge, I wonder if instead of fluffy features some interactive boards could be converted into things that could help you — like with stadium maps, or an app that would let a phone-less fan send a message to someone else’s device. Our guess is that you will see more, not less, of these interactive screens in the near future.

If nothing else, the Cowboys and AT&T seem to be showing that even off the field, the NFL is a competitive league — we will be interested to see how the technology deployments at other stadiums, like Jacksonville, play out. Look for more coverage and anlysis in our upcoming Q3 Stadium Tech Report issue, which will focus on… football. AT&T technology photos to follow.

AT&T Fan Experience board with single message

Message board showing photo compilation

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Cisco, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, iPhone, NFL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, AT&T, AT&T Park, AT&T Stadium, Dallas Cowboys, DAS, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, NFL, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco 49ers, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi

Stadium Tech Report: MLB stadium technology reports — NL West

August 20, 2014 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Editor’s note: The following team-by-team capsule reports of MLB stadium technology deployments are an excerpt from our most recent Stadium Tech Report for Q2 2014, which focuses on Major League Baseball. To get all the capsules in one place as well as our featured reports, interviews and analysis, download your free copy of the full report today.

NL WEST

Reporting by Chris Gallo

San Francisco Giants
AT&T Park
Seating Capacity: 41,503
Wi-Fi: Yes, 1,289 access points
DAS: Yes, 196 antennas
Beaconing: Yes

The San Francisco Giants continue to be a pioneer in stadium connectivity. The club calls AT&T Park home, where it features over 1,289 Wi-Fi access points throughout the stadium. The park seats more than 41,000 fans, which means there is one Wi-Fi access point for every 32 fans when at full capacity.

AT&T has also installed 196 DAS antennas as part of its wireless network. Combined with Apple’s iBeacon technology, fans can easily order concessions or upgrade tickets with the MLB At the Ballpark app. When it comes to stadium connectivity, the San Francisco Giants set the standard.

Los Angeles Dodgers
Dodger Stadium
Seating Capacity: 56,000
Wi-Fi: Yes, 1,000+ access points
DAS:Yes
Beaconing: Yes

For the second consecutive year, Los Angeles Dodgers president Stan Kasten promised fans Wi-Fi would be installed by opening day. And the second time proved to be a charm. Dodger Stadium now includes more than 1,000 access points transforming the half-century old ballpark into one of the baseball’s most well-connected parks.

The 52-year-old stadium underwent a $100 million renovation a year ago, including improved connectivity and a cellular distributed antenna system. Fans can even take advantage of the MLB At the Ballpark app using their smartphone to pre-pay for parking and tickets to get into the game with iBeacons installed in Dodger Stadium.

San Diego Padres
Petco Park
Seating Capacity: 42,455
Wi-Fi: Yes, 423 access points
DAS: Yes, 460 antennas
Beaconing: Yes

After a significant upgrade in 2012, Petco Park features more than 400 Wi-Fi access points and more than 400 DAS antennas throughout the stadium. The San Diego Padres were also one of the first teams to install iBeacon technology.

The club is rolling out the technology slowly and experimenting with the MLB At the Ballpark app. When strolling through Petco Park, Padres fans can receive the day’s lineup card and real-time coupons for the team store. Backed by Qualcomm, the Padres are bringing a consistent connected experi- ence to its fans.

Arizona Diamondbacks
Chase Field
Seating Capacity: 49,003
Wi-F: Yes, 278 access points
DAS: Yes, 460 antennas
Beaconing: Yes

One of the more versatile stadiums in baseball, Chase Field turns 16 this season. Since 2011, the Diamondbacks have partnered with AT&T to make it easier to fans to enjoy the ballpark and game.

This season fans are encouraged to be part of the Ultimate Dbacks Digital Experience. This includes logging on to one over 200 different AT&T hot spots to order concessions with MLB At the Ballpark and watch instant replays of Mark Trumbo’s home runs using MLB At Bat.

Colorado Rockies
Coors Field
Seating Capacity: 50,455
Wi-Fi: Yes, 600 antennas (by July 15)
DAS: Yes for AT&T; Undergoing renovation and will have VZW and T-Mobile soon. Beaconing: Yes – Install will be complete by June 30.
The lone team in the NL West without Wi-Fi over the past few seasons, the Colorado Rockies are going to change that in 2014. The club plans to install more than 600 Wi-Fi access points by July 15. But that’s not the only upgrade to the 19-year old park.
The Rockies removed 3,500 seats in an $11 million dollar project to build the Rooftop Party Deck. This 38,000 square-foot area is open to all fans to socialize, grab a bite to eat, and watch the game. The best news is Rockies fans should be able to stay connected with iBeacon installs and improved DAS antennas also planned for deployment by this summer.

To get all the capsules in one place as well as our featured reports, interviews and analysis, download your free copy of the full report today.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apple, AT&T, Baseball, Cisco, DAS, Los Angeles Dodgers, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Arizona Diamondbacks, At Bat app, AT&T Park, Colorado Rockies, Coors Field, DAS, Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles Dodgers, MLB, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi