The NFL is "planning to block live streams" of Super Bowl XLVIII inside MetLife Stadium after streams of last year's game "took up too much bandwidth" at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, according to Jon Brodkin of ARSTECHNICA.com. The game will be streamed by NFL.com and Fox Sports, but NFL Senior VP & CIO Michelle McKenna-Doyle said that both of those sources "will be blocked on the Wi-Fi and cellular networks at MetLife." McKenna-Doyle: "We (blocked) it last year, but we did it on the fly when we started having some challenges. This year we planned ahead to do it." She said that the 82,500-seat stadium "will be able to handle 25,000 to 30,000 concurrent Internet users across cellular and Wi-Fi." But Brodkin reported the plan "is to prioritize upload speeds over download because fans generally spend a lot of time posting photos and statuses to social media." The NFL is "providing a Super Bowl app to attendees with an event guide and 'exclusive content,' but it won't include streaming video or replays." McKenna-Doyle: "When you can't do the basics, it's all of a sudden not that cool that you can show replays or stream the game. It's a fine balance. We're pushing the envelope every year. As technology gets better and better I'm willing to take more and more risks about what we allow." She "is optimistic that multicast technology, as opposed to the unicast tech used today, will limit the amount of data needed for streaming video at future Super Bowls" (ARSTECHNICA.com, 1/27).
LIGHTING THE WAY: NFL Exec VP/Business Ventures Eric Grubman said that he is "confident that Sunday's Super Bowl ... won't have a repeat of last year's blackout." He noted MetLife Stadium is in "exceptional condition." Grubman "assured that they've done multiple tests" on the venue. He said, "There are multiple sources of power that come from different power plants. More than one plant would have to go down" (BROADCASTINGCABLE.com, 1/27).
