New England Patriots, Gillette Stadium, and 802.11ac Wave 2 Wireless

Tech Tailgate

1. Patriots Initial Investment in Wi-Fi and the Transformation of the Connected Stadium

2. Why Now – Timing of the Wave 2 Wireless Upgrade

3. Wi-Fi Coach Program and Eliciting Feedback From Fans

4. Technical Considerations and Fan Experience Benefits of Investing in Wave 2 Wireless

5. Business Impacts and Support of Digital Initiatives Moving Forward

EXTREME NETWORKS EBOOK

New England Patriots, Gillette Stadium, and 802.11ac Wave 2 Wireless – 1Share

Entering his 22nd season with the team, we sat down with Fred Kirsch, VP of Content with Kraft Sports Productions and the New England Patriots, to discuss fan engagement technologies and mobile connectivity, specifically the team’s decision to upgrade to 802.11ac Wave 2 Wi-Fi throughout Gillette Stadium entering the 2016 NFL season.

In 2012, the NFL’s New England Patriots embarked on a journey to deliver in-venue Wi-Fi connectivity to anyone attending a game or an event at Gillette Stadium, their home field in Foxborough, MA. The decision to invest in this technology wasn’t immediately motivated by a desire to increase attendance or leverage the network to establish consistent revenue streams for the club. Instead, the Patriots recognized the cultural shift toward a heightened engagement with digital mediums, and with it the growing expectations of their fan base to stay connected to their mobile devices. Ultimately, the goal was to provide the best possible experience for their fans.

The resulting Wi-Fi network was met with an encouraging response, and the Patriots were seen as pioneers for successfully tackling the in-venue connectivity challenge at a time when other clubs were still debating the investment. Fast forward four years and the majority of the NFL stadiums have some form of a Wi-Fi network, with a significant number offering fan-facing Wi-Fi throughout their venue. The rest of the big three in North America pro sports (NBA/NHL/MLB) are following suit, and college athletics is sure to be the next big market in the US and Canada - if it isn’t already.

At the time of the original investment, the decision wasn’t immediately motivated by a desire to increase attendance or leverage the network to establish consistent revenue streams. The goal was to provide the best possible experience for their fans.

It certainly looks as though the past four years have validated the Patriots’ original investment, but characteristic of all technology, Wi-Fi has evolved significantly along with the way in which organizations leverage Wi-Fi solutions. In addition to delivering robust connectivity in-venue, teams are now tapping Wi-Fi analytics to better understand the engagement patterns of their fan base, delivering value-added mobile services and unique content offerings, as well as leveraging the technology to improve game day operations, and advance strategic digital marketing initiatives. In addition, monetization strategies to leverage the network as an asset are being established, delivering consistent revenue streams back to the business.

With the steadfast goal of optimizing fans’ experience at their venue, while staying at the forefront of in-venue technologies, the Patriots are entering the next phase of their Wi-Fi journey by upgrading Gillette Stadium with Wave 2 802.11ac Wi-Fi. To better understand why the Patriots are upgrading now and what the perceived impacts will be, we sat down with Fred Kirsch, VP of Content at Kraft Sports Productions and the New England Patriots. Fred was a stakeholder when the team first invested in Wi-Fi several years ago; he witnessed first-hand how Wi-Fi impacted the game day experience, and articulated what the plans are for Wave 2 moving forward.

New England Patriots, Gillette Stadium, and 802.11ac Wave 2 Wireless – 2Share

1. Patriots Initial Investment in Wi-Fi and the Transformation of the Connected StadiumThe Patriots first began discussing the idea of delivering Wi-Fi in-venue due to a preemptive interest in the role emerging technologies would play in sports. Jonathan Kraft, President of The Kraft Group and the New England Patriots, headed the NFL’s Digital Media Committee at the time of the team’s original investment and recognized the prominent role technology would play in the League (and in the sports industry) moving forward. Kraft’s proactive involvement and understanding of this space extended across the team’s management. The growing expectations of a more mobile-enabled fan base were acknowledged, leading the Patriots to believe in the value of providing Wi-Fi connectivity to their fans upon entering into Gillette Stadium.

The upfront goal was to improve overall mobile functionality through a robust Wi-Fi solution. The Patriots envisioned Wi-Fi as a platform to develop and expand moving forward. While the current network is slightly older than some of the League’s newest installs, unique Wi-Fi usage among fans on game day averaged about 25% adoption in the ’15 season – a number which has steadily grown since the network’s first deployment. The Patriots now collect Wi-Fi analytics from fan engagements, and provide mobile services to venue goers. The team has also built out an app specifically targeting in-venue fans called Patriots Gameday Live, offering rich content and unique promotions for fan consumption. On the business side, the team increasingly relies on the network to support the critical operational functions necessary for event management.

“When it comes to the experience economy, the Patriots are right in the middle of it; from the moment a fan decides to plan a trip to Gillette Stadium, the experience begins.” —Fred Kirsch

In what began nearly a decade ago, Gillette Stadium and its surrounding campus has also transformed into a more comprehensive experience for fans, a venue model that’s grown across professional and collegiate sports. While the product on the field remains the focal point, fans are now able to build an experience around the game by accessing an array of restaurants, bars, retail shops, hotels, movie theaters and team-centric options like The Hall at Patriot Place and Patriots Pro Shop – all in a centralized campus known as Patriot Place. This approach has taken off in the sports community as fans are hungry for an experience that permeates behind the physical confines of the stadium and the product on the field; the Patriots want to position Gillette Stadium and Patriot Place as such. Plans also include delivering Wi-Fi connectivity in select parking lots and tailgating areas, emphasizing the goal to bring an encompassing and connected experience to fans.

Wireless traffic growth in many hospitality, sports, and entertainment venues – with their high-density of users and devices and the ever-present requirement for instant communications – is motivating demand for the benefits of Wave 2 of 802.11ac. Indeed, we often define both the challenges and the solutions to core wireless LAN capacity demands in terms of density. This term can actually be used in this context to describe both demand (more clients, with ever-greater traffic demands, in a given location within an area covered by Wi-Fi) and also supply (decreasing the distance between access points and providing improved wireless efficiency so as to provide more raw bandwidth to all those users). Demand, after all only grows over time – consider the emerging impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) with many new customer devices that will play a major role in security, location-based services, and other applications over the next few years.

Wave 2 in Public Venues

New England Patriots, Gillette Stadium, and 802.11ac Wave 2 Wireless – 3Share

2. Why Now – Timing of the Wave 2 Wireless Upgrade The timing behind the Wave 2 upgrade is multi-faceted. The team has witnessed a significant increase in devices, the number of critical business functions, and the number of third party organizations requiring reliable and secure Wi-Fi access in and around the stadium. On the fan facing side, by measuring engagement patterns year over year the Patriots noticed an incremental growth of network usage and adoption. They also noticed a change in how Wi-Fi bandwidth was being generated: with rising awareness and usage, uploaded fan traffic to the internet equaled downloaded fan traffic from it.

Whether you are in the sports industry or not, for those in the IT space the increased user reliance of mobile devices and their applications (and Wi-Fi to support them) is a known trend. However, this doesn’t change the Patriots’ goal of best servicing their fans with a phenomenal game day experience; this means Wi-Fi delivery to the client must align with the habits of their fan base, including the best access to social media, personal applications, streaming video, unique team content (the Gameday app) and promotional team offerings and services. For the Patriots, investing in upgraded Wi-Fi equipment – in this case Wave 2 Wi-Fi - was a primary catalyst to achieve this goal, but what was the technical rationale behind the upgrade?

“ In-stadium, high-density Wi-Fi connectivity that provides any guest unrestricted mobile access with a rich content experience was always the next frontier for the NFL, and something we had researched for years.” —Fred Kirsch

It was critical to ensure the network investment would experience an expanded lifespan of four to five seasons; this is compared to the previous generation of Wi-Fi technology, which typically averages a three season lifespan before upgrades are recommended. The Patriots’ forthcoming network will be primarily designed to leverage 5GHz as most Wi-Fi clients today support that operating band. Typically 50-60% of Wi-Fi clients in sports venues today support the 802.11ac protocol, so the time to upgrade is a sensible one: match the capability of the clients moving forward with the capability of the AP radios. The inherent capability in the radio is also coupled with a reworked Wi-Fi design for the stadium with a goal for smaller, more localized cells; specifically, the integration of under seat antennas positions access closer to the user device. With this design all Wi-Fi clients will achieve higher minimum data rates where the net-effect provides more airtime for every user. This newfound level of efficiency positions the Patriots (and their network) to grow with the growing expectations of their fans.

Wi-Fi Usage: Average Peak Concurrent and Unique

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Data Collected From Extreme Networks Partner Stadiums (using Extreme Application Analytics)

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Average UniqueAverage Peak Concurrent

Upgraded from 1G Internet to 10G Internet for the 2016-2017 season.

Upgraded core network to accommodate additional 10GbE.

30 miles of copper cabling added.

Tripled the number of Access Points from 350 to over 1,100.

Added 750 Underseat Access Points.

50% stadium capacity sizing, 100% stadium coverage model.

Gillette Stadium Network Stats

Figure 1

New England Patriots, Gillette Stadium, and 802.11ac Wave 2 Wireless – 4Share

3. Wi-Fi Coach Program and Eliciting Feedback From FansTo justify their decision to upgrade to Wave 2, the Patriots also looked to their data-driven and fan-facing quality assurance mechanisms. Similar to any fan-facing service offering, guaranteeing the Wi-Fi network fully meets expectations is an ongoing effort. Part of this effort includes analyzing network performance and conducting fine-tuning exercises event to event, activities that yield useful quantitative insights, and are critical exercises from an engineering and technical perspective.

“Our fans are here to enjoy themselves, not deal with tech issues. We need to assist in that area any way we can if we’re going to promote Wi-Fi and digital content.” —Fred Kirsch

That said, in order to gather more qualitative insights, the Patriots leverage a team of Wi-Fi Coaches. The Wi-Fi Coach Program is essentially a mobile IT Help Desk, where reps roam the stadium on game days, offering assistance to fans who experience difficulties accessing the Wi-Fi network. Not only is this a great touch point with fans and a vehicle to deliver immediate troubleshooting support, it also elicits real time feedback from active users. Each interaction is documented and the team reviews the Wi-Fi Coach log after each game, validating the network analytics with notes from the Wi-Fi Coach team. This methodology acted as an incentive to upgrade to Wave 2 Wi-Fi: while the network met the expectations of the business and the fans today, to meet the expectations of the future an upgrade was necessary.

Wi-Fi Coach Feedback 11/23/15 – Bills vs. Patriots

How was theoverall Wi-Fiexperience today?

ExceedsExpectation

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How was the GameDay Mobile Appexperience today?

How was yourexperience todayinteracting with fans?

How was your Wi-Fi Coachexperience today?

In addition to collecting feedback in real time and across various platforms, the Patriots create and review Wi-Fi Coach Feedback Reports after each game, which includes feedback from the network, the Patriots Gameday App, and the Wi-Fi Coach Program. Fans are asked to complete simple surveys to rate their experience, pictured above.

When Asked What the BEST Part of Being a Wi-Fi Coach Is, They Answered:

“Knowledge, seeing company product in action, and let’s be honest, getting to work at the football game!”

“Talking and interacting with fans; most seemed to be very happy to see us.”

“Interacting with fans who loved hearing about the Wi-Fi and free GameDay app.”

“Supporting a very visible customer in real time, and improving their experience.”

“Seeing Wi-Fi technology work in a commercial environment, and seeing them provide a quality experience for fans.”

Wi-Fi Coach Program

Figure 2

New England Patriots, Gillette Stadium, and 802.11ac Wave 2 Wireless – 5Share

4. Technical Considerations and Fan Experience Benefits of Investing in Wave 2 WirelessWith the high-density of devices and users in stadium environments and the wireless traffic growth across the industry, there is a strong business case for upgrading to Wave 2 Wi-Fi to meet these demands. At a high-level, density in venue environments can describe both the challenge and solution; demand from more clients and devices with ever-growing traffic needs requires a larger supply of wireless APs with improved wireless efficiency for a substantial increase of raw bandwidth for users. With more and more devices becoming Wi-Fi enabled, especially those critical to supporting game day operations such as mobile ticketing, POS devices, security sensors, and camera equipment, the Patriots anticipate this demand will only increase — so as part of their Wave 2 upgrade the Patriots will surely expect a rise in the number of APs installed at Gillette.

Overall, Wave 2 can lead to significant improvements in IT staff productivity, at least to the point where IT professionals can turn their attention to matters other than those related directly to wireless service, coverage, and reliability.

The Patriots acknowledge the number of APs within Gillette and the surrounding campus will increase, but as the design process continues to be finalized the exact AP count remains relatively fluid. What might be more compelling, however, is the anticipated functionality that the 11ac APs tout. The new hardware includes a faster processer and ram, and the multi-user MIMO improves application delivery from AP to client; in a venue setting, this will support a user’s ability to access on-demand and streaming video such as instant replays, unique camera angles, and other video-based content. The flow-based capabilities embedded in the new APs are convincing as well: offering Layer 7 visibility, control, and analytics — all without causing a CPU bottleneck that would otherwise impact throughput performance

Speaking of analytics, using an industry-first distributed analytics solution, Fred and team will have flow-by-flow, location-by-location, device-by-device access to distributed network analytics, a completely unique feature and one that will allow the Patriots to measure network and application response at the AP level, or the point of ingress, as opposed to a centralized analytics approach. Updated features like these will not only yield an immediate impact on the fans’ mobile experience, it will also equip the Patriots with unprecedented data points into network usage and performance, business intelligence that not only feeds into the fan experience, but also directly relates to the effectiveness and impact of the Patriots organization and their supporting functions.

Flow Enabled Software — Foundation for Future

PolicyUnique Session

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Data Plane Control

Security and QoS (L2-L7)

Analytics and MeasurementsFlow Flow Flow Flow Flow Flow

Flow Flow Flow Flow Flow Flow

Flow ProcessingPacket ProcessingPerformance Bottleneck — Eliminated!

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Extreme Products Deployed at Gillette Stadium: ExtremeWireless™

802.11 ac Wave 2 APs Wireless Controllers

ExtremeSwitching™

C-Series, S-Series Switches

ExtremeManagement™

Management Center

ExtremeControl™Access Control

ExtremeAnalytics™

Application Analytics

Wave 2 in the Stands

Figure 3

New England Patriots, Gillette Stadium, and 802.11ac Wave 2 Wireless – 6Share

5. Business Impacts and Support of Digital Initiatives Moving ForwardLooking ahead, with this upgrade, the Patriots are confident they will be prepared to meet not only the increasing connectivity demands of their fans and their devices, but also any new reasons to connect. This includes wearables, augmented reality, next generation player statistics and virtual concierge services, just to name a few. If history serves, no one can be certain which fans will use which features but there’s no doubt every fan will be doing something that requires connectivity. That said, the negative business impact of poor connectivity exceed the benefits of reliable Wi-Fi. If for no other reason than to allow fans to do what they want on the network, the Patriots feel investing in connectivity is good business.

The negative business impacts of poor connectivity exceed the benefits of reliable Wi-Fi.

The Bottom Line — The Patriots hope of earning another Super Bowl berth fell just short in the 2015 NFL season, but this certainly wasn’t for a lack of effort. As the entire Patriots organization prepares to deliver another quality product on the field next season, Fred and his team will be prepared to deliver another quality product off the field by deploying a Wave 2 Wireless solution at Gillette Stadium for their fan base.

WWW.EXTREMENETWORKS.COM

Extreme Networks, Inc. (EXTR) delivers software-driven networking solutions that help IT departments everywhere deliver the ultimate business outcome: stronger connections with customers, partners and employees. Wired to wireless, desktop to datacenter, we go to extreme measures for our 20,000-plus customers in more than 80 countries, delivering 100% insourced support to organizations large and small, including some of the world’s leading names in business, education, government, healthcare, manufacturing and hospitality. Founded in 1996, Extreme is headquartered in San Jose, California. For more information, visit www.extremenetworks.com or call 1-888-257-3000. 10550-1016-10

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