College Football Fans Used Over Six Terabytes of Data at the National Championship Game

These days, if a stadium wants to boast about its amenities, it better be sporting a high-capacity WiFi network. Fans are not only there to watch the game, but to keep up on other games, post pictures of themselves on social media, and even watch highlights captured at a much better vantage point. All this can be done over cellular networks, certainly, but for maximum speed and reliability, fans are looking to connect their mobile devices to WiFi. And fans at the NCAA Football National Championship were certainly sucking some bandwidth at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

According to a report by Mobile Sports Report, the in-stadium WiFi at AT&T Stadium carried 4.93 TB of data over its network during the game on Monday night. AT&T also saw 1.41 TB travel over its cellular network. This totals over six terabytes of data from computers and mobile devices, and that’s not even counting data transmitted on Verizon, T-Mobile, or Sprint Networks. Even so, that number is higher than any data total posted at a sporting event, including last year’s Super Bowl and the home opener of the San Francisco 49ers’ new stadium.

While this number won’t be repeated on your typical NFL or MLB game day, it’s proof that more and more fans want the reliability (and free-ness) of WiFi when using their devices at sporting events. Though these types of things are rarely publicized, I imagine many teams in slightly older stadiums are working on or planning to work on upgrading their current infrastructure. This spike in data usage isn’t something that is going away any time soon. Teams would be smart to be on the front end of this trend.

(Image via Ron Kikuchi)





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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Matt
9 years ago

I think we can all vouch for how terrible Wi-Fi is at most baseball stadiums.

Seth Keichline
9 years ago
Reply to  Matt

I wouldn’t know. Angel Stadium doesn’t have it. But the cellular signal at my seats are horrific. Sometimes I can’t even send a text message. So Wi-Fi to me sounds like the Holy Grail.