Questions over expectations, costs still in play for venues

The Sacramento Kings gave fans a taste of 5G’s capabilities with a test last November at Golden 1 Center.Sacramento Kings

When to roll 5G out, how it meshes with existing building infrastructure and how much it costs are top of mind for venue operators, sports technology executives and designers.

“5G is primarily a leap in cellular connectivity that will lend itself to new ways of bringing technology into venues. It will be important for teams and operators to understand how it impacts the building and its systems as a whole,” said Nick Moriarty, senior designer for Rossetti and one of the Detroit-based architecture firm’s point persons on technology.

Moriarty said venues and teams need to figure out their ROI expectations, adding that he sees great potential for real-time and interactive data and experiences for fans.

“No one knows what the transition is going to cost because no one knows what we want 5G to be yet,” said wireless industry veteran Scott Montgomery, national director of business development at FDH Infrastructure Services.

Montgomery has worked with carriers, teams and municipalities for more than 24 years to secure wireless technology at venues, including work at Amway Center in Orlando and PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.

Bob Zweig, chief information officer of the Arizona Diamondbacks, said 5G has to prove itself technology-wise, be adopted by the marketplace and then figure out how its faster transfers of data fit into sports venues.

“To put that in our stadium means denser solutions and more antennas closer to fans and that introduces all kinds of challenges,” Zweig said.

The costs and volume of infrastructure changes venues will face will depend on how the 5G systems vary from one telecom carrier to another, he said. “The biggest challenge too is what does each carrier’s 5G look like and what are their needs?”

Like with other technology changes, team executives, venue managers and fans will need to be educated on what 5G entails.

“[5G networks] require more access points or antennas, but they can be serviced with fiber and network cable as opposed to the thick and difficult to work with coax cable of today’s DAS. There will be time, effort, expense and disruption involved to deploy these networks. We will have to make sure the design doesn’t disrupt the building and that it plays nice with the existing Wi-Fi networks,” said Marcus Wasdin, chief information officer for the Atlanta Hawks and State Farm Arena.

He also said it will be a while before 5G experiences are rolled out at arenas and stadiums. While AT&T and Verizon are deploying 5G networks in some major metros as soon as this year, Wasdin said, Apple is scheduled to release its first 5G phone in 2020.

“I don’t envision 5G starting to show up in buildings for another two to three years. It will be five years or more before they become prominent,” he said.

Montgomery said venue owners and operators can recoup some of the costs of retrofitting by capitalizing on the more compressed nature of the 5G equipment itself. While most new venue construction over the past 20 years has included the building of massive rooms for Univac-like control systems, he said those will largely disappear.

“Dig a bunker under your parking lot, move your mission control there, and give the team folks back some real estate to sell for games,” Montgomery said.

Another more virtual way to recover the costs would be to sell the data that the properties collect during in-game usage. “The improved latency of 5G might mean that a team could identify 500 of its most rabid fans and tell them that if they shoot live from their seats on their 5G phone and send it to a league-run site over the venue’s 5G network, the video might be incorporated into the broadcast,” Montgomery said. “The league, of course, owns that clip and any data collected from its viewers, but just made a fan for life.”

Last November, the Sacramento Kings and Verizon held a 5G demo at the Golden 1 Center showing fans the technology’s capabilities via a virtual reality experience that gave them courtside views of the game.

“We are excited to be the first professional sports team in the United States with the ability to demonstrate how AR and VR powered by Verizon’s 5G technology can transform the fan experience,” said Ryan Montoya, Kings chief technology officer.

Montoya said he sees 5G as building on the arena’s technology efforts, which include 4K replays on one of the largest arena scoreboards in the U.S.

Carson Goodale, CEO of FanFood, a Chicago-based sports technology firm that develops apps for mobile concessions ordering, said fans may not have 5G phones yet but he expects consumers will be ready to embrace the next-gen speeds.

“I would bet the majority of sports fans have an unlimited data plan these days and this is obviously great for sports fans in high-density environments to stay connected throughout the event,” Goodale said.

He sees great potential for 5G.

“Opening up 5G in sports will enable more IoT technologies to process more complex data sets in real time like never before. I’m sure the cost of processing, storing, and analyzing those data sets will be the expensive part,” he said.