Super Bowl XLIX Stadium Aims to Provide Wi-Fi in Every Row

More and more, NFL fans prefer to watch professional football games at home in front of HD TVs, with their Wi-Fi-connected mobile devices in hand and their favorite snacks within reach.

That’s why so many teams are racing to get fans off the couch by providing them with that level of connectivity in the stadium.

“The technology that people have in their homes is certainly improved over the last few years, so what we need to do to compete with that, is we need to give them an environment that really makes it worth their coming here,” said Mark Feller, vice president of technology for the Arizona Cardinals, in a recent video produced by CDW.

The Cardinals’ stadium, University of Phoenix Stadium, will host Super Bowl XLIX, which will take place Feb. 1. Thankfully, the Cardinals have rolled out a major upgrade to the stadium's wireless network that will ensure that fans attending the game can connect to their favorite social networks and even stream instant replay video on their mobile devices.

“We have built the Wi-Fi system in the building to be able to handle the capacity of the stadium for us, which is about 63,000 people. I don't know how many people will actually be using it. The performance numbers from previous Super Bowls are probably about half of that number,” Feller said.

Ahead of the game, the Cardinals have been working on ensuring that the stadium has no wireless dead zones.

“If you look around, you see a lot of these antennas that are part of the Wi-Fi system in the stadium. We are making adjustments to some of those so that they're, you know, they hit row 9, but maybe not row 8. You know, so they are really specifically adjusted so that the WiFi will be very efficient,” Feller said.

Watch the full video on the Cardinals' Big Game Bandwidth below