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Sports and entertainment venues are modernizing by running fan-facing services and back-office systems on the same managed connectivity foundation. The strongest current examples link ticketing, entry, ordering and cashless payment to point-of-sale terminals, access control and operational monitoring. Some operators go further and use private cellular for the handheld devices that must keep working while they move through a crowd. The approaches differ from venue to venue, and the evidence for them comes mostly from named deployments and vendor case studies rather than independent testing.

Connectivity is now an operating system for the venue, not just guest Wi-Fi

For most of the last decade, stadium connectivity meant a public Wi-Fi network that fans used to check scores and post photos. That network still matters, but it is no longer the main reason venues invest. The same network now has to carry point-of-sale transactions, turnstile and entry checks, staff radios and devices, building management sensors and security cameras. When one of those systems slows down, the fan notices immediately, so the operational and guest-facing sides of the venue depend on the same infrastructure.

Connected workflows are the set of linked processes that result. A fan buys a ticket on a phone, passes through an entry lane, orders from a seat or a stall, pays without cash, and receives an alert or menu update through a venue app. Behind each step, the venue records data on sales, queues, staffing and equipment health. Modernization means making those steps reliable enough to share one network, and manageable enough that a small IT team can run them across every facility the organization owns.

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Which workflows get connected

Five groups of workflows recur in the current deployments and vendor material:

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  • Ticketing and entry. Mobile tickets, express entry lanes and, in some venues, biometric checks at the gate. Entry is the workflow most sensitive to latency, because every delay is visible in a queue.
  • Concessions and point of sale. Handheld and fixed POS terminals, cashless payment and, increasingly, cashierless stands. These devices roam around a venue and must reconnect without stalling a sale.
  • Ordering and pickup. Click-and-collect for general admission, ordering from hospitality seats, and digital menus that update without reprinting.
  • Venue apps and engagement. Streaming, in-seat content and push notifications, which depend on the same capacity as payments and entry during peak minutes.
  • Operations and monitoring. Security cameras, IoT sensors for building systems, and the ePOS and back-office links that let management see sales and service data in one place.

The practical point is that these groups compete for the same wireless capacity and the same IP systems. A network designed only for fan browsing usually fails the first time a stand’s payment terminal and a crowd of phones hit it at the same moment.

What the current deployments show

The four cases below are the most specific public examples available. Each is described by the venue, the vendor or a company statement, so the figures belong to those parties and should be read as reported outcomes, not independent measurements.

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Borussia Mönchengladbach and Extreme Networks (Germany, published May 25, 2026)

The case describes a single converged network that covers a football club’s stadium, hotel, training pitches and fan venues. It combines wired and wireless access, uses centralized cloud management and deploys Wi-Fi 7 access points. The vendor reports reliable connectivity for more than 50,000 fans on match days. The case does not name specific access point models, so it documents the architecture rather than recommending particular hardware. Marius Köller, Head of IT Systems Administration at Borussia VfL 1900 Mönchengladbach GmbH, described the aim as making sure operations and fan experience are supported by the same infrastructure, and that the network can keep pace as the club grows.

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Haslam Sports Group and Celona (private cellular for mobile POS and entry)

This is the clearest example of private cellular used for workflows that move. The express-entry devices and concession point-of-sale devices travel around the stadium, so Wi-Fi roaming between access points is the weak point the operator wanted to avoid. Jeff Patton, Network Manager at Haslam Sports Group, said the team believed new technologies could address several operational bottlenecks at once. The case reports 3x wireless coverage with one-third fewer access points, more than tenfold lower express-entry latency, and a planned future operating model of five or more turnstiles per staff member. All of these are case-study claims from the deployment and the provider. The operating model is described as a future state, not a measured result.

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London Stadium and PTI Digital (United Kingdom)

London Stadium’s connected-stadium strategy builds on an existing Wi-Fi and distributed antenna system (DAS) foundation. Its integrated workflows include click-and-collect for general admission, ordering at hospitality seats, digital menus and ePOS. Graham Gilmore, CEO of London Stadium, described the aim as connecting these systems into a single customer view that supports personalization, and said that PTI’s end-to-end approach was central to that goal. The case is a strategy account, so it describes what was built and intended rather than publishing outcome figures.

Boingo as a connectivity provider

Boingo’s venue overview describes mobile ticketing, streaming, cashless concessions, security cameras and IoT as connected venue use cases. The company says it serves more than 70 sports and entertainment venues; the venue page does not state the year of that count. This is a provider statement about its own business, and it shows the range of workflows that venue operators now expect a connectivity provider to support.

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Case Connectivity approach Workflows connected Reported figures (source’s own claim)
Borussia Mönchengladbach / Extreme Networks Converged wired and wireless network, centralized cloud management, Wi-Fi 7 access points Stadium, hotel, training pitches and fan venues across operations and fan experience Reliable connectivity for 50,000+ fans on match days (vendor-published, 2026)
Haslam Sports Group / Celona Private cellular Express entry and concession POS devices that move around the stadium 3x wireless coverage, one-third fewer access points, more than 10x lower express-entry latency; five or more turnstiles per staff member as a future model (case-study claims)
London Stadium / PTI Digital Wi-Fi and DAS Click-and-collect for general admission, hospitality ordering, digital menus, ePOS not stated (the case describes strategy and integration, not outcome measures)
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How widespread are these workflows?

The most quantified view comes from the 2025 Stadium Connectivity White Paper, presented by Verizon and Stadium Tech Report. Its percentages describe the venues that responded to that survey, not all venues in the industry. The figures below show the trend across the years the survey reports.

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Measure (survey respondents) 2023 2024 2025
Venues with more than five cashierless concession deployments 39% 53% 58%
Biometric use for ticketing not stated 14% 22%
Biometric use for concessions not stated 7% 14%

The direction is consistent: cashierless concessions and biometric checks both grew across the reported years. Because the figures come from one survey’s respondents, they show what those venues reported doing, and they should not be read as the adoption rate for every stadium or arena.

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Choosing an architecture for your venue

No single approach fits every venue. The cases above use three different foundations: a converged wired and wireless network, private cellular, and Wi-Fi with DAS. Each involves trade-offs in capacity, coverage, latency, integration and cost. The sources do not provide a neutral head-to-head comparison, so the criteria below are the ones a venue should test for itself.

  • Capacity and coverage in dense crowds. Ask for measured performance at your peak attendance, not just a coverage map. The Celona case reports a coverage gain with fewer access points, but that result depends on its specific site.
  • Latency and roaming for mobile POS and entry. If devices move through the venue during a sale or entry scan, roaming behavior matters more than peak throughput.
  • Integration with ticketing, payment and existing IP systems. Confirm which systems must connect and who supports each interface.
  • Centralized management across facilities. The Borussia case shows one management model covering a stadium, hotel, training pitches and fan venues. Multi-site organizations should check whether one console can manage every facility.
  • Security and policy controls. Separate guest traffic, payment devices, access control and operational systems so that a fault in one does not expose the others.
  • Resilience and support. Establish how the venue keeps trading if the network or a provider fails on a match day.
  • Cost and installation complexity. Account for cabling, access points or antennas, cloud management fees and staff training. None of the reviewed cases publishes a full cost model.

Evidence limits to keep in view

Most of the outcome figures above come from vendors describing their own deployments. The Borussia figure is a vendor-published match-day claim, the Celona results are case-study claims, and the Boingo venue count is a company statement. None of these has been independently benchmarked in the material available, and none establishes that a given technology raises revenue across venues. The strongest independent evidence is the survey trend, and even that describes respondents rather than the whole industry. Treat the named cases as proof that these architectures are in use, and test any figure against the conditions of your own venue before relying on it.

The connected-venue approach is most defensible where the same network already carries several workflows, where entry and payment depend on devices that move, and where a multi-site operator wants one management model. Where those conditions are absent, a simpler network may be enough.

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Sources cited in this article are the named case studies from Extreme Networks, Celona, PTI Digital and Boingo, and the 2025 Stadium Connectivity White Paper from Verizon and Stadium Tech Report. Their links were not supplied for this article, so readers should locate the original publications by name and date.

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