A modern stadium event is all about the experience.

And whether hosting an NFL game or Taylor Swift, major soccer events or BTS, Wi-Fi is the essential, go-to foundation for those seamless experiences — in everything from ticketing and security to point of sale and bandwidth-hungry fan interactions.

That’s because Wi-Fi is uniquely positioned to handle the most high-density environments, even after a critical goal or musical peak when tens of thousands of smart phones upload videos all at once. And Cisco is uniquely positioned to provide the most scalable, secure Wi-Fi.

Iconic venues that depend on Cisco’s Wi-Fi innovations include SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Singapore Sports Hub, Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Allianz Arena in Munich and Real Madrid’s Bernabéu Stadium — to name but a few.

All are drawn to Cisco’s full-stack, end-to-end solution, including security, Internet of Things, observability, and intuitive, AI-powered automation and analytics.

“What makes Cisco unique, is that we do it all,” said Matt Swartz, a distinguished engineer within Cisco’s wireless product team. “We own the entire stack, top to bottom. That includes many layers of security, things like Umbrella, Cisco Secure Firewall, and Cisco Secure Network Analytics.”

An AI-powered foundation for today’s challenges — and what comes next

At the same time, Cisco is looking ahead, empowering stadiums — and fans! — for the future. Cisco Spaces, for example, leverages AI to simplify and manage the hyper-complex array of technologies, sensors, and devices that must interact seamlessly in any stadium. And it creates opportunities to leverage that data in all new ways, for enhanced engagement, safety, and more.

“Cisco Spaces,” Swartz said, “enables us to have contextual information — like knowing where someone is within the stadium, being able to interact with them, being able to send them a push notification, or helping them find their way around the venue.”

And as Josh Suhr, principal architect for Cisco customer experience, expressed, this is just the beginning,

“There’s a massive universe of analytics that you can get from Cisco Spaces,” Suhr said, “around what things are happening in the venue, what traffic patterns look like. And there’s different experiences you can power through apps now via Cisco Spaces.”

These different experiences could include real-time directions around the stadium or to the concession stand with the smallest queue, as well as personalized offers and discounts. All while keeping staff appraised of everything from soap running low in the bathrooms to a potential security issue.

“With ultra-wideband Wi-Fi connected with Cisco Spaces, we can expect more kinds of interaction and insights,” Swartz added, “to further streamline the stadium experience.”

Broadcasting Wi-Fi with focused power and flexibility

In terms of the Wi-Fi itself, Cisco is innovating critical solutions. For example, the company’s fourth-generation Wi-Fi antenna, the 9179F, expands capabilities in high-density environments, with software-configured flexibility. That demanded years of iteration and multiple-domain expertise — not to mention close customer relationships to understand their needs and challenges.

“Because we’re Cisco,” said Suhr, “we purpose-build our solutions, with the engineering expertise, the hardware engineering, software engineering, all of it. We can make high-density Wi-Fi in something like a stadium successful because we are very specific about what these antennas can do, both how they transmit and what they receive.”

The result is seamless, high-bandwidth coverage in every corner of a large arena.

“The value in those antennas is the ability to connect large amounts of clients in a very dense area by focusing the coverage only where it is needed,” said Michal Kowalik, customer delivery architect for Cisco Customer Experience (CX). “In a traditional, non-stadium deployment, you will have a very wide scope of coverage. But in a stadium with such a large concentration of people, that wouldn’t scale. So, you need to focus a lot of that energy into smaller sectors. That means more radios, each serving a smaller amount of people but with increased capacity and throughput.”

SoFi Stadium illustrates the scale involved in a large venue. It utilizes around 2,500 Wi-Fi access points to ensure seamless coverage and high-density bandwidth — supported by infrastructure that’s powerful, flexible, and secure.

Ready for the future

Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., is a showcase venue for Cisco Wi-Fi. As a host site for a number of the largest sporting and entertainment events in the world, the stadium recently embarked on a crash network modernization initiative with Cisco, its longtime partner. That included the first Wi-Fi 7 deployment in a major venue.

As Costa Kladianos, EVP and head of technology for Levi Stadium’s home team, the San Francisco 49ers, explained, the new network and security backbone can handle just about anything thrown at it. And a single, converged data center simplifies monitoring and management.

“We now have the world’s largest outside 4k video boards,” Kladianos said. “And we replaced our sound system, our LED screens, and all our production systems. So, we worked with Cisco to be able to run it all from our main data center.”

Kowalik, who is based in Krakow, Poland, has worked with some of the largest stadiums in Europe. And he recounted the complexity of such implementations, which involve multiple teams from Cisco, its partners, and the stadiums.

“This is where Cisco Services adds a tremendous amount of value,” he said. “We’ve done these implementations before and we know the process from the beginning, the touchpoints, the possible pain points, and how to de-risk at every stage.”

As for future challenges, Suhr stressed that the pace of change will only accelerate.

“Things are changing fast on both the Wi-Fi side and on the AI side,” he said. “It’s an extremely exciting time but also daunting. Things like smart glasses are a novelty today, but they could add to the proliferation of devices over the next few years. And Wi-Fi 8 will be here before we know it. So, for us at Cisco, we just look to continual improvements.”

Whatever the changes, Cisco will be ready, Swartz concluded, especially as advanced, AI-powered solutions like Cisco Cloud Control take the company’s platform advantage to the next level.

“I think that we’re far from realizing the full potential of what can be done with a high-density network in a stadium or an arena,” he said. “And Cisco’s leading the way.”