How a Professional Baseball Club Upgraded Ballpark Wi-Fi for Fans and Game-Day Operations

Case Study: Event Venues

At A Glance

A professional baseball club operates a ballpark built for a big-game feel at a smaller scale, with concourses, suites, picnic areas and entertainment spaces spread across the property. As the club’s longtime managed IT services provider, AIS already knew the venue’s infrastructure and the club’s goals. Together they decided that fan Wi-Fi was a necessity, not a luxury, and AIS led the upgrade.

• Industry: Event venues, sports and entertainment
• Services: Managed Services, Consulting
• Engagement length: More than 10 years

The Challenge

Fan experience is the club’s top priority, and its marketing team worked hard to engage fans during and between games. But the existing wireless network, built on aging infrastructure, could not carry the load of a full crowd, and the club had little insight into where and how fans wanted to connect online. Game-day operations were also asking more of the network, from mobile merchandise carts to ticket scanning.

The Solution We Delivered

• A plan built on managed services. With a stable, monitored baseline already in place, AIS worked with club leadership to decide which investments would add the most value for staff and fans. Wi-Fi rose to the top of the list.
• A ballpark-wide Wi-Fi upgrade. AIS recommended and implemented a significant expansion of wireless capacity across the venue’s fan areas, working through the realities of an older stadium: thick concrete floors and walls that block wireless signals, high-density crowds packed into concourses and seating areas, and aging infrastructure that had to be modernized along the way.
• Capacity for operations, not just fans. The new network was designed to carry operational devices as well as fan traffic, including mobile point-of-sale carts, ticket scanners and wireless cameras.
• Continued expansion. When the club redesigned its visiting team clubhouse, AIS mapped access point placement with the cabling contractor, registered new access points to the wireless controller, applied the right network segments and Wi-Fi profiles, and tested connectivity throughout the space before sign-off.

Results & Impact

• More wireless capacity for fans across the ballpark, supporting a better game-day experience.
• Room on the network for revenue and operations devices: mobile merchandise kiosks, ticket scanners and fan photo cameras.
• Visibility into how fans connect, so the marketing team can see which channels fans already use and focus its outreach there.
• Seamless wireless coverage in the redesigned visiting team clubhouse, delivered under the club’s existing support agreement.

Planning a venue upgrade or a game-day network refresh? Talk to AIS about a free consultation.