Former FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein is not planning to attend next month’s Super Bowl in Santa Clara, Calif., but he still plans to be focused on the game.
Or, more accurately, he will be focused on the crowd at the game and how they use social media.
CBS will carry the game, which should bring in the year’s biggest TV audience, as the Super Bowl does most other years. Adelstein, who is now an influential wireless industry lobbyist as the president and CEO of PCIA: The Wireless Infrastructure Association, said that Super Bowl Sunday at Levi’s Stadium also will be the place where a record number of social media posts occur. Adelstein said the technology in the stadium will allow fans to post much more quickly than at any of the other Super Bowls.
“Fans demand that technology because they are using social media at unprecedented levels at these events,” Adelstein said. “A few years back you couldn’t dream that you could take a selfie at the game and send it on. Now if you try to post that selfie and the circle turns for a few minutes, you get darned frustrated. The carriers made sure that’s not going to happen.”
Adelstein said the wireless industry views big sporting events like the Super Bowl as the best time to showcase its technology because of all the attention around the event.
“This is the wave of the future,” he said. “Young people living on social media are the customers of the future. They’re going to live this way their entire lives. And their kids are going to expect even more. Their kids are going to expect Star Wars-style holograms of their friends showing up in front of them.”
