Networking
Strong Wi-Fi and other connectivity solutions are helping to attract college sports fans on game day. On the same subject : Shows Video Game TV Rated by Tomatometer.
Erin Brereton has written about technology, business, and other topics for more than 50 magazines, newspapers, and online publications.
Today, with 18-24 year olds checking their smartphones once every 5 minutes on average, the scoreboard may not be the only screen fans look at during college sporting events.
To provide attendees with broad network access, some colleges and universities have increased the connectivity capabilities of their athletic venues, allowing them to implement new technology-focused game day services such as digital ticketing and application-based concession requests.
In 2019, the University of Pittsburgh outfitted its Petersen Events Center, a 12,500-seat arena used for the school’s men’s and women’s basketball games, with more than 200 Extreme Networks access points, along with antennas turn signals aimed at each seating section to provide Wi-Fi for fans, says Seth Graham, IT assistant athletic director.
“It’s much more of a commodity these days than a feature,” says Graham. “We started noticing, just trying to keep up, if people can’t get their phones out, check other scores, check their social media, take photos, post photos, they get frustrated.”
Pittsburgh Panthers fans can now enter the arena using mobile tickets and place food and drink orders from their seats using a mobile app, thanks to the facility’s robust Wi-Fi coverage, which proved important when pandemic protocols of COVID-19 encouraged social distancing.
“You were trying everything you could to minimize human interaction,” says Graham. “We were very grateful that we did, because we wouldn’t have been able to switch to mobile ticketing and mobile food ordering if we hadn’t implemented it.”
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Hardware Additions May Help Address Network Coverage Concerns
Pressures from the pandemic have generally helped accelerate connectivity efforts by higher education sports venues, according to Anthony Di Fino, deputy athletic director for external relations at the University of Cincinnati. See the article : John Cena called Nintendo in 2017 to play a new 2D Metro game. The university still offers paper tickets for fans who request them, but in 2021 it made a big transition to digital versions that fans can download to their Apple Wallet or Google Pay accounts.
Many universities, Di Fino says, have focused on placing Wi-Fi routers near stadium gates to ensure fans can download their tickets on the spot.
“That seems to be the biggest problem when it comes to implementing this,” he says. “Once they get to the gate, if you don’t have Wi-Fi or you have weak signals because of the number of phones that are around the gates on game day, it’s a struggle. Holds lines.
READ MORE: How the University of Michigan ran a network connectivity upgrade.
Establishing connectivity can be challenging in older structures, which can be a problem for some colleges and universities. Cincinnati’s Nippert Stadium, for example, is over 100 years old.
Meanwhile, the University of Minnesota’s football stadium was built in 2009, and its hockey arena was built in the early 1990s. Williams Arena, however, where the school’s basketball games are played, has been in use since 1928.
The Wi-Fi network is a foundation that allows us to send messages, like, ‘Hey, use Wi-Fi, take pictures, post them on social media, use these hashtags.'”
seth graham
IT Assistant Athletic Director, University of Pittsburgh
To boost cellular connectivity at campuses and enable digital ticketing, parking passes and more, the school is using an AT&T distributed antenna system (DAS), according to Travis Cameron, chief revenue officer and assistant athletic director.
“Running cables through older buildings obviously presents a lot of challenges,” says Cameron. “Every time we do a job, we try to introduce pathways for future work, whether it’s cordoning off ducts or additional ducts, or whatever the job requires. We found that any time we need to do this kind of work, it’s a significant investment, and a big part of that comes from a lack of that kind of infrastructure.”
Cincinnati’s football stadium, built in 1915 in the center of campus, was designed to be freely accessible to the community, says Di Fino. At any given moment, teenagers could be using the field for a flag football game, or local residents could be running up and down the stadium stairs during practice. As a result, the stadium lacks permanent, defined gates to which network access can be wired.
“We don’t have a physical structure that says, ‘This is Gate A, come in here,'” Di Fino says. “Our IT people found a way to do that by putting transponders in the buildings and making sure they signal the doors where we usually set up ticket scanning services. There are a lot of buildings around, and that allows us to cable from those buildings.”
LEARN MORE: Stadium Wi-Fi connectivity and the college sports fan experience.
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To implement the Bearcats Fast Pass entry option, which allows game attendees to bypass the line by scanning their tickets at a separate tracking area and wearing wristbands that grant access to certain gates, the school found adjustments needed to be made to ensure that ticket scanning devices are working properly. This may interest you : United States storm past Australia, England remain unbeaten and more from Day 4. .
“In fact, we were there three or four days before a game and we said, ‘Okay, let’s try to see if we have a signal here,’” Di Fino says. “When we went to scan some of the tailgate areas, we had no network coverage on our scanners. So again we had to work with our IT team. They found that we only had to move one transponder.”
Digital Access and Entry Offer More Than Fan Convenience
The number of people in the US who regularly follow or have a favorite college team
Source: Learfield, “Intercollegiate Fans Report, 2021”, August 2021
While substantial planning and investment efforts may be required to establish enhanced connectivity, digital ticketing, and other technology-driven conveniences, those services can ultimately provide significant marketing and operational benefits.
Digital ticketing is noticeably less expensive than designing, printing and mailing thousands of hard copies, says Cameron. The University of Minnesota also found that digital tickets provided another advantage during the pandemic.
“Where we really saw the value was in flexibility,” he says. “We had canceled games. We had games that were moved to different days because teams had players that couldn’t play because they had COVID. Because we can ask everyone who has a digital ticket, we can get that information. We can update the time on the ticket. We can update the date. We can put on the ticket that the event is cancelled. He really became a great asset in a year of great uncertainty.”
If you don’t have Wi-Fi, or have weak signals due to the number of phones hanging around the gates on game day, it’s a struggle. Holds lines.
Antonio Di Fino
Assistant Athletic Director for External Relations, University of Cincinnati
The University of Pittsburgh, Graham says, sees its expanded Wi-Fi access, which the school is pleased to find 20 to 30 percent of attendees use during games, as a way to increase fan engagement. during games.
