When deciding your stadium WiFi solution and provider, you shouldn’t jump at the first appealing offer. It’s a decision that needs to work for both you and your visitors. If you’re not sure how guest WiFi works, it basically adds a whole new experience to your venue.
It’s not just about offering a connection, it’s about engagement, communication, promotion and enhancing the fan experience.
Stadiums could be missing out without the right WiFi solution for them. Ensure you choose the right WiFi solution for your stadium by considering these key points:
Branding Opportunity and User Experience
Any service provided should be customer centered, right? A WiFi service is no exception to that. Fan engagement is recognised to be one of the core objectives for most stadium and event venues and the WiFi service can enhance this opportunity by enabling fans to share their experiences with a wider audience outside of the venue.
Today's fans fans bring more than just themselves to a game or event, they bring their phones and tablets to stream and share their experiences. From Generation X to Generation Z who have grown up with technology and social media, engaging online during the game is just another part of attending these events.
With the in-stadium experience blending into the online world like this, stadiums are in a great position of influence to a mass audience.
A branded WiFi service will create an appealing and seamless experience for the user and this is an important factor to consider for your stadium WiFi. Its aim is to fulfil your user’s needs and enhance the experience of being in the venue.
The WiFi service can integrate with surveys and feedback forms, discounts for food and drinks at the bar, season ticket deals, show videos, merchandising and so more which puts your brand and messaging in the hands of your fans.
Other features include device recognition, to enable returning visitors to have access to the internet without having to register again, accessibility aid with wayfinding applications and more. This added value goes a long way to increasing user satisfaction.
Analytics and Insight
Knowing which areas your visitors spend the most and least time might not be beneficial for a venue as unique as yours. It’s likely people will spend most of the time seated watching a suspenseful game.
But there’s still plenty of insight you can obtain from visitors who are connected to your WiFi which will come in handy when it comes to making business decisions.
- Analytics will show you the highly congested areas which allows you to strategically place advertising where you’ll know it’ll be seen.
- You’ll be able to track new and existing users, monitoring their behaviour and even targeting those fresh fans and turn them into season ticket holders.
- Learn who your demographics are and use this information in your marketing strategy.
- Analyse the most popular refreshment or merchandising stalls and ensure there’s enough space or facilities nearby.
- Understand where people enter and exit, to see if improvements need to be made to sign posting or open other access routes.
There’s so much more to discover from WiFi analytics which can drastically strengthen your marketing and communications strategy.
24/7 Support
A stadium is a unique venue: games, events and exhibitions can happen at all hours, so the support you receive shouldn’t be limited to another company’s office hours.
You shouldn’t settle for less than the right WiFi service provider who will provide 24/7 support. Should there be any WiFi help needed, you want your provider to be on the case and contactable, regardless of the time.
You should also ensure your provider is able to offer continual support, from setup to 10 years down the line as you never know when issues may occur.
Network Design
The most important factor of your Stadium WiFi is the network design. Your whole solution must be underpinned by reliable, high quality infrastructure that has been meticulously planned and measured, for the best possible service.
Connectivity, capacity and coverage are factors that are analysed when it comes to any venue. However, they are also factors that can easily be rushed by just working out that having X thousands of users must mean that X access points are needed. This easy mistake has caused major problems for venues in the past with channel interference and seriously damaged organisational reputation.
A comprehensive, and in-depth on-site site survey needs to take place and take into account pitch integrity, accessibility of ideal access point locations, as well as available connectivity and potential user numbers. Along with this, consideration for the actual installation needs serious thought. For example, would you want a cherry picker to drive across the pitch to allow installation teams to put up access points. Will your supplier have a solution for this?
Want to Learn More? Here’s How to Choose the Right WiFi Solution for Your Stadium and How We Can Help
When choosing your stadium WiFi solutions provider, you want somebody with experience. You want a supplier who can deliver more than just stadium WiFi, who can help you with using WiFI to maximise your visitors’ experiences.
We recently collaborated with Kingspan Ulster Rugby Stadium and designed a high performing public WiFi network which accommodates nearly 20,000 supporters.
If you would like to read more about venue and conference WiFi and how you can improve visitor experience, download our guide below.
About the author
Rebecca O'Donovan
Rebecca is the Marketing Director. She's worked for SPARK TSL since 2012. She is responsible for high level marketing strategy focusing on lead generation and aiding the vision of the business; to ensure that no patient has to pay for entertainment.
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