By Patrick Seaman | CEO @ SportsBug™ | Board Member | Futurist | Author of Streaming Wars
Introduction: Building on the Liability Conversation
Following up on our recent article about the cybersecurity and legal vulnerabilities of stadium Wi-Fi, this piece explains why leading carriers like Verizon are now steering fans away from venue Wi-Fi entirely. More importantly, it explores why SportsBug never relied on Wi-Fi in the first place and how that decision has enabled us to deliver secure, real-time stadium experiences without the lag or liability.
Stadium Wi-Fi: The Weak Link in Modern Venues
Public Wi-Fi networks inside stadiums have long been touted as a fan benefit. In reality, they remain a patchwork of aging infrastructure and shared responsibility, prone to congestion, reliability issues, and exposure to cyberattacks. Even with upgrades, these networks are vulnerable to identity-based threats, vendor segmentation failures, and event-day overloads. As our previous article highlighted, these risks are not just operational, but legal, with courts now applying a “knew or should have known” standard when assessing cyber negligence.
The fundamental challenge becomes clear when examining actual usage patterns. At the 2025 DAYTONA 500, stadium Wi-Fi logged 31.4 TB across 40,687 clients, averaging approximately 772 MB per user. Yet only 40% of fans actually connected to the Wi-Fi network, revealing both technical limitations and low adoption rates despite heavy infrastructure investment.
Verizon’s Public Pivot at Super Bowl LIX
The turning point came at Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, where Verizon made an unprecedented public announcement. For the first time in NFL history, Verizon actively advised fans not to use the stadium Wi-Fi and instead connect via Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network.
According to Joseph Russo, Verizon EVP and President of Global Networks & Technology, “It’s absolutely a performance thing.”
This dramatic shift followed Verizon’s experience at Super Bowl LVII in Arizona, where stadium Wi-Fi outages had disrupted service. As Russo explained to Stadium Tech Report, “After watching the Wi-Fi go down in Phoenix, we started working with Apple and others to find a way to prioritize 5G over Wi-Fi.”
To support this cellular-first approach, Verizon deployed an unprecedented infrastructure at the Caesars Superdome:
- 509 Ultra Wideband 5G radios (double the number deployed at Super Bowl LVIII)
- 155 C-band antennas
- 42 MatSing lens antennas
- Over 560 miles of fiber, enough to wrap around the Caesars Superdome 869 times
The results validated Verizon’s strategy. Fans consumed over 67 TB of data inside the stadium, with Verizon handling 38.1 TB, serving approximately 53% of the 65,719 attendees. Peak speeds reached 4.1 Gbps down and 1.06 Gbps up, with Verizon customers experiencing 2.4x faster median download speeds and 4.8x faster median upload speeds than competitors.
The Core Wi-Fi Problem: It Wasn’t Built for the Uplink Era
Historically, Wi-Fi infrastructure prioritized download speeds for passive content consumption. But today’s fans are content creators, fundamentally changing network demand patterns. During the Taylor Swift Eras Tour at the Superdome,
Verizon’s Russo noted that uplink traffic exceeded downlink for the first time in his 30-year career. “You literally had 80,000 people live-streaming the whole concert,” Russo observed.
Fans live-stream, upload, and share instantly, creating a demand profile that Wi-Fi, operating on limited unlicensed spectrum, simply cannot handle effectively.
This shift toward upload-heavy usage represents a fundamental challenge for traditional stadium networks.
According to Aaron Amendolia, Deputy CIO of the NFL, Wi-Fi can automatically override 5G connections, complicating network selection: “As you walk into the stadium, your device is going to pick up the best connection for you.”
However, what appears to be the “best” connection may not deliver optimal performance for today’s content-creation demands.
Why SportsBug Chose a Smarter Path
From the beginning, SportsBug was designed to bypass these problems entirely. Our system delivers real-time play-by-play audio using 4G and 5G cellular networks, not Wi-Fi. This decision was intentional and strategic:
No infrastructure dependency: Works on any phone, requires no installations, logins, or venue coordination. Fans can access our service immediately without navigating complex stadium network configurations.
No liability exposure: Avoids shared systems, POS integration, or cyber risk handoffs that plague venue-managed networks. We operate independently of stadium infrastructure, eliminating liability concerns around data security and network management.
No delay: Delivers audio with latency under 300 milliseconds, compared to 20 to 120 seconds or more on legacy streaming platforms. This architecture lets SportsBug operate independently of the complex, overloaded networks that struggle under game-day pressure.
By choosing cellular networks from the outset, SportsBug anticipated the trend that major carriers like Verizon are now embracing. We recognized that cellular networks offer superior reliability, security, and performance for real-time applications.
Real-Time Audio. Zero Lag. Zero Risk.
Legacy applications streaming commentary can lag more than two minutes behind live play, creating frustrating disconnects between what fans see and what they hear. In contrast, SportsBug consistently delivers audio in under one second, with recent deployments measuring as low as 200-400 milliseconds.
Because we run exclusively on public cellular networks, we eliminate the need to manage local infrastructure or expose ourselves to vendor risk. This cellular-first approach provides several critical advantages:
- Consistent performance: Cellular networks maintain quality of service regardless of venue Wi-Fi conditions
- Broad coverage: Works equally well in stadium concourses, parking lots, and surrounding areas
- Future-proof: Benefits automatically from ongoing 5G infrastructure investments by major carriers
- Simplified deployment: No need for venue-specific installations or network integrations
The Evidence: Wi-Fi Adoption Challenges Continue
Recent data from major sporting events reinforces our cellular-first strategy. At Super Bowl LIX, where Extreme Networks provided analytics for the stadium Wi-Fi, only 17.2 TB of data was transferred among 13,672 clients, with a peak of 7,507 concurrent users. This represents a fraction of the total data consumption, with the majority of fans clearly preferring cellular networks.
Similarly, at the DAYTONA 500, despite extensive Wi-Fi 6 infrastructure investment, only 40% of attendees chose to connect to the stadium network. These statistics demonstrate that even when high-quality Wi-Fi is available, fans increasingly rely on cellular networks for their connectivity needs.
Conclusion: It’s Time for Stadiums to Rethink Wi-Fi
The evidence is overwhelming: stadium Wi-Fi is no longer mission-critical, it’s mission-compromised. Verizon’s public stance at Super Bowl LIX, NFL data trends, and fan behavior patterns all point toward a cellular-first future. The combination of aging infrastructure, security vulnerabilities, adoption challenges, and the fundamental mismatch between Wi-Fi capabilities and modern fan behavior creates an unsustainable situation for venue operators.
SportsBug has already embraced this cellular-first future. By designing our platform around the strengths of cellular networks rather than the limitations of venue Wi-Fi, we deliver an experience that’s not just faster and more reliable, but fundamentally safer and smarter.
As major carriers continue investing billions in 5G infrastructure and fans increasingly demand real-time, low-latency experiences, the advantages of cellular-first platforms will only grow. We invite stadium operators, sponsors, and fans to join us in embracing this future, where connectivity works seamlessly regardless of venue infrastructure limitations.
References
- Stadium Tech Report. “Verizon tells customers: Don’t use stadium Wi-Fi at Super Bowl LIX.” https://stadiumtechreport.com/feature/verizon-tells-customers-going-to-super-bowl-dont-use-the-stadium-wi-fi-use-verizon-5g-instead
- Verizon. “Verizon powers winning network experience on Super Bowl Sunday.” https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-powers-winning-network-experience-super-bowl-sunday
- Light Reading. “Why Verizon swapped Wi-Fi for 5G at Super Bowl LIX.” https://www.lightreading.com/5g/why-verizon-swapped-wi-fi-for-5g-at-super-bowl-lix
- Extreme Networks. “Keeping Fans Connected During the DAYTONA 500.” https://www.extremenetworks.com/resources/blogs/keeping-fans-connected-during-the-daytona-500
- PhoneArena. “Verizon boss says 5G future is uplink, Taylor Swift convinced him.” https://www.phonearena.com/news/verizon-vp-future-of-5g-is-uplink_id167852
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