49ers Fans Are Using a LOT of Data at Levi’s Stadium

by
September 17, 2014

When the San Francisco officially opened it’s new stadium on September 14th, they also opened one of the most technologically advanced stadiums in professional football. Levi’s Stadium is a connected facility through and through. One of the biggest perks for fans was the 600 Wi-Fi access points strewn throughout the stadium. Many were hidden under the actual seats, promising good connectivity even when sitting and watching the game. This allowed fans to both use the Levi’s Stadium proprietary app — allowing fans to order food to be delivered to their seats, amongst other things — and do all the necessary status updates and photo sharing that come hand-in-hand with attending a sporting event.

Well, fans certainly put that wireless network through its paces on Sunday. The stadium’s network reportedly pushed 3.3 Terabytes worth of data that day, beating a record held by MetLife Stadium during Super Bowl XLVIII. For reference, the maximum size of a photo upload allowed by Facebook is 25 MB. That equates to 1.32 million max-size photo uploads. The traffic total doesn’t come only from photos, obviously. In fact, a good deal came from video offered by the stadium’s own app.

When fans aren’t using the Levi’s Stadium app to order beer and food, they can also leverage it to watch replay video right on their devices. The 49ers said that fans watched 7,800 replays on Sunday. Considering the feature didn’t really work until the second half, those are some pretty impressive numbers.

For the most part, Levi’s Stadium’s data test went pretty smoothly on Sunday. As the 49ers work the bugs out, they will hopefully serve as a blueprint for future stadiums, as fans’ needs (or desires, at least) to view and upload content is only going to continue to grow.

(Header photo via Matthew Roth)

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David G. Temple is the Managing Editor of TechGraphs and a contributor to FanGraphs, NotGraphs and The Hardball Times. He hosts the award-eligible podcast Stealing Home. Dayn Perry once called him a "Bible Made of Lasers." Follow him on Twitter @davidgtemple.

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