AMB Sports and Entertainment Amps Up Event Experiences at Mercedes-Benz Stadium with Wi-Fi 6E from HPE

To support the premier fan experiences that have garnered top satisfaction honors at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, AMB Sports and Entertainment (AMBSE) is modernizing its wireless network with a Wi-Fi 6E-enabled HPE Aruba Networking solution by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE). The deployment enables guests to breeze through no-hassle entry lanes and live stream events in high-definition, while also ensuring that staff and partners have the seamless, reliable connectivity needed for powering the real-time production technologies required to deliver one-of-a-kind entertainment.

"We wanted to deliver the absolute best connectivity to our guests, fans and in-venue production staff," explained Kevin Pope, chief information officer, AMBSE, parent company of the National Football League (NFL)?s Atlanta Falcons and Major League Soccer (MLS)?s Atlanta United franchises that call the stadium home. "HPE Aruba Networking provides us with the secure, reliable infrastructure critical to entertaining, engaging, and informing our guests for award-winning gameday and major event experiences."

According to Pope, powering the stadium's signature experiences with high-performance Wi-Fi helped earn the Falcons recognition as No.1 in Overall Gameday Satisfaction in the NFL's annual Voice of the Fan survey for the 2022-2023 season.¹

Serving millions, annually

Hosting more than 50 major sporting and entertainment events and three million guests annually, the 75,000-seat stadium also boasts more than 20 different event spaces with premium amenities, fully customizable experiences, dedicated event team staff, and state-of-the-art technology for creating unique and unforgettable events. Adopting Wi-Fi 6E throughout the facility, including seating, concourses, event spaces, and VIP suites, supplies AMBSE with the next-gen Wi-Fi needed for continue its tradition of excellence.

"For professional sports and entertainment venues dedicated to ongoing innovation, whether its frictionless entry or enabling attendees to seamlessly share the excitement, elevating experiences is mission-critical," said Stuart Strickland, wireless chief technology officer at HPE Aruba Networking. "Providing fans, guests, staff, and partners with the highest-performance Wi-Fi enables AMBSE to continue delivering exceptional hospitality to everyone who visits Mercedes-Benz Stadium."

Meeting escalating bandwidth expectations

Given the escalating fan and event attendee expectations for streaming high-definition video of on-site excitement to their family, friends, and social media audiences, the capability to provide massive amounts of bandwidth is key to AMBSE meeting its experience goals.

"At some of our headliner events we're now seeing an average of 600MBps for each attendee," said Pope. "That's a substantial increase in just a few years. This makes our new Wi-Fi 6E deployment critical to supporting both customer expectations and the back-of-the-house applications we use to orchestrate the best-in-class experiences we deliver to every attendee, at every event, to make them feel appreciated, valued, and respected."

Future-ready for rich, immersive experiences

With its new Wi-Fi, AMBSE plans to enhance the offerings within the stadium app, including the introduction of precision wayfinding.

"We're really excited to leverage our new Wi-Fi for a variety of new capabilities to further advance the options our customers have to customize gamedays and event experiences like never before," said Pope. "We appreciate the strong partnership we've built with HPE Aruba Networking that is enabling us to make our connected stadium goals happen."

Sources:
¹ NFL and the Atlanta Falcons

About AMB Sports and Entertainment

AMB Sports and Entertainment is part of the Blank Family of Businesses comprised of the National Football League's Atlanta Falcons, Major League Soccer's Atlanta United FC, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta Drive Golf Club, and PGA TOUR Superstore.

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) is the global edge-to-cloud company that helps organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data, everywhere. Built on decades of reimagining the future and innovating to advance the way people live and work, HPE delivers unique, open, and intelligent technology solutions as a service. With offerings spanning Cloud Services, Compute, High Performance Computing & AI, Intelligent Edge, Software, and Storage, HPE provides a consistent experience across all clouds and edges, helping customers develop new business models, engage in new ways, and increase operational performance. For more information, visit: www.hpe.com