The connected stadium is changing game day

On Super Bowl Sunday in February, Verizon customers in and around Levi’s Stadium used 40.32 terabytes of data, according to Verizon. Five months later, the carrier said its network moved close to 500 terabytes across the U.S. stadiums that hosted the 2026 World Cup. Those numbers explain why the connected stadium has become a construction priority. Fans now expect to post, stream, pay and get through the gate with a phone, and teams are spending to make that work for 60,000 people at once.

Connected stadium demand starts with the phone in your pocket

The Super Bowl LX figure tells you how fast the load has grown. Verizon says its 40.32 terabytes at Levi’s Stadium ran 6% above the previous year and more than five times the 7 terabytes its customers used at Super Bowl 50 in 2016. The company counted about 59.6% of the 70,823 people in attendance on its network, and it reported median download speeds of 2.16 Gbps during kickoff and halftime.

Wi-Fi carries a second, separate load. At Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans in 2025, Extreme Networks’ analytics counted 17.2 terabytes moved over Wi-Fi, an average of 1.3 GB per connected device. The biggest spike came before kickoff, at 11.2 Gbps as the teams took the field. The largest in-game spike, 8.1 Gbps, arrived when the Eagles knelt to close out the win.

The app mix surprised the people running the numbers. Facebook led actual social usage inside the building, though only 6% of fans polled beforehand had picked it. Among sports apps, the NFL app drew the most engagement, ahead of ESPN, Fox Sports, CBS Sports and Bleacher Report.

What the 2026 World Cup taught stadium networks

The World Cup gave carriers a month of Super Bowl conditions in a row. Ahead of the tournament, Sports Video Group reported that Verizon added 5G spectrum it estimated would raise stadium capacity three to five times. The work included thousands of under-seat antennas and dedicated 4G and 5G systems for upper decks, where coverage has long been weakest. Verizon also expected fans to use more than 50 terabytes per match inside a stadium.

After the final, TelecomLead relayed Verizon’s totals. The final alone produced 29.2 terabytes on Verizon’s network. Uplink traffic, the data fans send out, rose nearly 70% during the halftime show as people shared video and photos. Verizon also ran a private 5G network for referee body cameras and supported nearly 140 small-cell and temporary-site projects at transit hubs, fan festivals and watch parties.

That uplink number matters for anyone building a venue. Stadium networks were once tuned for downloads. A crowd that films and shares every goal flips the traffic pattern, and the network has to absorb it in the same few minutes.

AT&T took a similar approach in North Texas. Hoodline reported that the carrier added 110 macro sites around the Arlington stadium district, plus small cells, and engineered the upgrades for two to three times the traffic planners expected. AT&T said most of that hardware stays in place, so Cowboys fans inherit the World Cup build.

Wi-Fi 7 arrives with Nashville’s new stadium

New venues get to design the network from the ground up. The Tennessee Titans picked Extreme Networks to install Wi-Fi 7 at the new Nissan Stadium, a $2.1 billion, 60,000-seat building scheduled to open in 2027, according to Intelligent CIO. The stadium will be the first to use Extreme’s Multi-Beam Wireless, which pairs MatSing antennas with Extreme access points to aim coverage at specific seating areas.

“we’re defining the future of stadium connectivity”

Andrew McIntyre, senior vice president of technology, Tennessee Titans, via Intelligent CIO

Extreme says it now supplies Wi-Fi for 12 NFL teams and stadiums, and 30 NFL teams use its analytics product to study how fans use stadium Wi-Fi. That second number points to the real business case. Teams want to know which concourse jams at halftime and which app fans open after a touchdown, and the network is how they find out.

Face-scan entry and the app-first arena

Connectivity also changes how you get in and how you pay. At the Clippers’ Intuit Dome in Inglewood, fans can enroll in a system called GameFace ID and walk through entry lanes without pulling out a ticket. ESPN, via ABC7, reported that about half of attendees at past events had enrolled before arriving, and nearly 75% had by the end of the night. The same face data handles concession purchases and access to clubs and suites, and the venue app stores a payment card and age verification for alcohol.

The rollout had problems. Opening night in August 2024 brought an entry delay of roughly 38 to 40 minutes for a Bruno Mars concert after a third-party software issue forced staff back to barcode scanning. Owner Steve Ballmer told ESPN the lanes still needed work on latency. Fans who don’t want facial recognition can use a phone-based Identity Pass instead.

The Intuit Dome shows the trade-off you get with an app-first arena. Shorter lines depend on fans handing over a face scan or a linked card, and the whole system depends on the network holding up at the gate.

How the connected stadium reaches fans at home

The same infrastructure feeds the broadcast. Stadium networks carry the data behind player tracking systems and the camera feeds that power AI-generated highlights, and Verizon’s private 5G at the World Cup carried referee camera video. As streamers add more data-driven features, covered in our look at the next wave of sports streaming, the pipe out of the building matters as much as the pipe to the seats.

Fans in the stands are now part of the coverage too. A 70% jump in uplink traffic during one halftime show means thousands of people sending their own view of the game to friends and followers. Some of that ends up in group chats. Some of it ends up feeding the creators and independent commentators who cover games from outside the press box.

Nashville’s build has a fixed deadline. The new Nissan Stadium is expected to host Super Bowl LXIV in 2030, which gives the Titans and Extreme a few seasons to prove Multi-Beam Wireless under ordinary Sunday crowds first.