sanfrancisco49ers
Latest
The 49ers' new stadium is a temple of football and high technology
Looking for a metric of how far technology has come in recent years? Take a look at your local sports team's home field and compare it to Levi's Stadium, the new home of the San Francisco 49ers. It's a shiny new stadium, sure, but it's also a coliseum designed to cater to a generation of fans that carry tiny computers in their pocket. With over 400 miles of cable and more than 1,200 WiFi access points throughout, Levi's Stadium is an arena made for smartphone users -- though the jury is still out on the team's app-supported fan experience. So, what does it take to deliver WiFi to tens of thousands of fans simultaneously? We dropped by the Santa Clara stadium to find out. Check out the gallery below to see what we saw.
The 49ers' high-tech fan experience falls short in first real test
When an NFL team builds a brand-new stadium, it's usually packed with the latest tech to ensure a flashy introduction. The Dallas Cowboys have absurdly large video screens over the field and the Arizona Cardinals can move the entire playing surface outdoors to soak up some rays. This season, the San Francisco 49ers moved from Candlestick Park to Levi's Stadium: the first of the NFL's venues to be LEED certified, thanks in part to a solar collection system that will power all 10 home games. To enhance the fan experience, there's a smartphone app that sorts tickets and concessions, and wrangles instant replay. In fact, you can use it to scout the line at the nearest beer cart or place an order in advance for pickup or seat-side delivery. As you might expect, this past weekend's first game action put the new system to the test, and as is common with most new large-scale tech, fans felt the bugs pretty quickly.
