Building the Stadium of the Future Today - Cisco
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Atlanta Braves case study
Building the Stadium of the Future Today
FPO
With an assist from Cisco solutions and services, the Atlanta Braves give fans new
digital experiences to enjoy and share
Atlanta Braves
Industry
Sports and Entertainment
Location
Atlanta, Georgia
Number of employees
Over 1000
Website
www.mlb.com/braves
© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Atlanta Braves case study
New ballpark means new challenges for Braves IT And what a journey it was. At SunTrust Park, baseball is just one part of
When the Atlanta Braves baseball team began its plans for a new ballpark in the fan experience. The new property features a 1.5-million-square-foot
northern Atlanta, it had big ideas. The organization’s leaders wanted noth- mixed-use development called The Battery Atlanta, with bars, restau-
ing less than the most technologically advanced sports venue in the world. rants, retail shops, and apartments, as well as a four-star hotel and live
SunTrust Park would be a model of a state-of-the-art, digitally enhanced music venue. For the Braves—and the IT team supporting them—the job is
stadium experience, and Braves IT was under enormous pressure to get it no longer solely about providing a great day at the ballpark. Now, they are
right. landlords of a massive mixed-use development, with hundreds of tenants
operating year round.
“At the last four stadiums built in the U.S. prior to ours, the head of IT was
no longer at the company on or shortly after opening day,” says Greg Gatti, Where Braves IT had previously managed a relatively small in-house net-
Braves vice president of IT. “I talked to some of them, and the number-one work, with third-party vendors responsible for their own technology, Gatti
reason they struggled was bad infrastructure decisions. I was betting my job aimed to bring all digital systems onto a single platform.
and my future on the technology partners I chose for this project, and Cisco “It’s our reputation on the line,” he says. “We needed to have visibility and
was an easy decision.” control of the entire network to ensure everything runs smoothly for our fans
The Braves deployed a full complement of Cisco® solutions: end-to-end and guests.”
networking and Wi-Fi infrastructure, data center, digital signage and ana- The most advanced stadium in North America
lytics, security, support, and more, along with expert assistance from Cisco
Braves IT knew that Wi-Fi would be central to the SunTrust Park experience
Services at every step in the journey.
for tens of thousands of fans each day. “The Wi-Fi connectivity is the crown
jewel of our technology stack and the enabler for everything we do,” says
Gatti.
Working with the Braves’ public Wi-Fi partner, Comcast, Cisco Services
designed a champion-caliber Wi-Fi network from the ground up. With dual
100-Gigabyte Internet circuits and more than 1250 Cisco wireless access
points, SunTrust Park now delivers the fastest Wi-Fi speeds of any sports
venue in North America. The network can support thousands of simultane-
ous Wi-Fi sessions and deliver excellent performance, even in an extremely
dense, demanding outdoor environment.
“We give fans as much bandwidth as their devices can handle: up to 170
megabits per second, at their seats and across the entire property,” says
Gatti. “We’re really proud of the fact that our fans will have the ability to
stream and post without interference.”
Delivering new digital experiences
The Braves didn’t just build a new IT platform; they created entirely new
© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Atlanta Braves case study lines of digital services. That includes a Cisco Vision™ solution delivering in- ture (Cisco ACI™) software-defined networking (SDN) fabric with Cisco formation, video, and digital advertising to more than 100 HD displays across EMC VxBlock compute, storage, and virtualization. To protect all of this the ballpark and The Battery Atlanta. Cisco Services worked with the Braves business-critical technology, as well as thousands of fans and visitors, the IT and marketing teams to design and deploy the system and to create Braves use Cisco firewall and threat defense platforms, the Cisco Identity custom graphical and video content for a new stable of in-stadium corporate Services Engine (ISE), and Cisco Umbrella™ cloud security. partners. To make sure of the reliability and performance of the technology solutions, Over the same infrastructure, the Braves now also support interactive digital Braves IT also teams with Cisco Solution Support. If an issue arises with kiosks throughout the property. Fans can browse shops and restaurants— any part of the environment (including technology other than Cisco), Cisco even find out which concession sells their favorite beer—and get step-by- engineers can address the problem at the solution level to resolve it quick- step directions, all integrated with Major League Baseball’s Ballpark app. ly. While they’re at it, they also take every opportunity to scan dormant or The stadium Wi-Fi also supports digital ticketing and payments. Fans using emerging issues, so they can preempt and fix problems before they cause the Ballpark app can buy tickets before the game, forward them to friends, further issues. The expert assistance of Cisco Services also means that, and enter the park by scanning a barcode on their smartphone. Braves staff despite the size of the environment—close to 10,000 ports—Braves IT can also rely on Wi-Fi when they roam the entrances, scanning tickets in on manage everything with a team of just 18 people. mobile iPads to keep long lines moving. Guests can use the same Wi-Fi-en- abled payments to enjoy all kinds of entertainment across the stadium, all of which used to be cash only. If the Wi-Fi failed in any of those areas—especially for fans trying to get into the stadium—it could create bottlenecks that would ripple across the entire venue. Thankfully, there has never been a hiccup. One network to rule them all The biggest change for Braves IT has been the scale of the new stadium’s infrastructure, which is “ten times larger and 100 times more sophisticated than what we had before,” according to Gatti. “In our previous environment, the food and beverage vendors did their own thing; retail, environmental systems, security, everything was separate and siloed,” says Gatti. “SunTrust Park is the opposite. We have a unified tech- nology environment that incorporates the entire venue. We’re now a service provider to our food and beverage vendors, retailers, and parking provider. We push out Wi-Fi, video, and audio capabilities for the entire complex.” For the “brains” of the technology platform, the Braves built a state-of- the-art Cisco data center featuring a Cisco Application Centric Infrastruc- © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R)
Atlanta Braves case study
An experience to remember
Products and solutions
SunTrust Park opened in March 2017. The new venue, and the massive technology infrastruc-
ture supporting it, has delivered everything its architects hoped for. The Wi-Fi provides faster Cisco Services
connectivity than many fans get at home, while reliably supporting 41,000 visitors and hun- • Advanced Services
dreds of critical applications every day. No matter when fans visit SunTrust Park or what they do
• Business Critical Services
there—watch a game, stroll The Battery Atlanta, see a show at the Coca-Cola Roxy—they have an
experience to remember and share. • Solution Support
“The other night, we had a walk-off home run,” says Greg Mize, senior director, Marketing & In- Data Center
novation, Atlanta Braves. “People immediately posted video from their phones of the place going • Cisco Powered Network with Application
bonkers. If I’m not even at the game, but I’m following friends who are, and I see all the excite- Centric Infrastructure
ment, I’m thinking, ‘I need to go to a Braves game!’” • EMC VxBlock
In fact, Buzzfeed named SunTrust Park the most Instagrammed location in Georgia for 2017: the
first time the Braves had ever made the list. The rock-solid Cisco Wi-Fi is also facilitating a major Enterprise Networking
shift to digital ticketing, which saves • Catalyst 6000 Series Switch
the Braves organization significant • Enterprise Class Cisco Powered LAN and
time and resources.
WAN
“We’ve seen our mobile ticketing
numbers go through the roof,” says Security
Anthony Esposito, vice president, • Cisco ISE
Ticketing Operations. “Last year, out
of more than 2 million tickets sold,
• Cisco Umbrella
50 percent of them came in on a • Cisco ASA 9300 with FirePOWER
mobile device. This year on opening
day, 72 percent of tickets came in Industry Solutions
via mobile. That’s huge for us.”
• Cisco StadiumVision
The venuewide Cisco Vision video system and the advertising support from Cisco Services are
also making a big difference for the Braves’ bottom line. “Placement on our IPTV system at the Collaboration
old stadium was basically a giveaway that we used to help sell other sponsorships,” says Gatti. • IP phone system with Unified Contact
“Here at SunTrust Park, it’s a different story. Now, we sell that ad network, and it’s become a
Center Express
seven-figure-per-year revenue generator.”
All this is just the beginning. Braves IT expect to continue rolling out new services and digital
experiences using their Cisco technology platform. “Technology drives our business,” says Gatti. For more information
“We turn to Cisco to advise us, to help us with design, and to equip us with the solutions and
services to do it right.” To learn more about how Cisco solutions
can help you transform your sports
© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other and entertainment operations, visit:
countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R) www.cisco.comYou can also read
