BleedGopher
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per ESPN:
Coming soon to a college football stadium near you: interactive phone apps, live pregame locker room footage, concession stands filled with food from local eateries.
And plenty of Wi-Fi.
With college football fans choosing the HDTV home experience more and more over going to games, schools everywhere are stepping up the fan experience to lure them back to the stadiums.
“We want to make sure that the fan experience in the stadium is better than the experience at home on your couch,” Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said. “That is a significant challenge. Obviously television does a great job. So you’re competing against that a little bit, and competing against a lot of other things as well.”
The national epidemic of declining attendance, most troublingly among students, has spurred athletic departments across the country to get creative in improving their football stadium fan amenities, while also investing heavily in the most obvious of solutions.
“If you take a photo of fans in any stands, a high percentage of them will have their heads down on their phones or iPads or whatever,” Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez said. “To keep fans in the stands, you have to keep up with the technology, so they can continue to use those things in the stadium.”
Concerned by the decline in national college football attendance, the Big Ten last year formed a game-day experience subcommittee, which found that boosted cellular service and Wi-Fi availability throughout a stadium was paramount.
Previously, Penn State was the only Big Ten program with stadium Wi-Fi. But this summer, Wisconsin announced it would be spending $6.2 million to install a Wi-Fi network at Camp Randall Stadium for the upcoming season. Earlier this year, Nebraska's regents approved $12.3 million for a Wi-Fi and sound system project for its stadium. Ohio State and Illinois could soon have Wi-Fi capability in their stadiums, as well.
http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/102758/schools-aiming-to-improve-fan-amenities
Go Gophers!!
Coming soon to a college football stadium near you: interactive phone apps, live pregame locker room footage, concession stands filled with food from local eateries.
And plenty of Wi-Fi.
With college football fans choosing the HDTV home experience more and more over going to games, schools everywhere are stepping up the fan experience to lure them back to the stadiums.
“We want to make sure that the fan experience in the stadium is better than the experience at home on your couch,” Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said. “That is a significant challenge. Obviously television does a great job. So you’re competing against that a little bit, and competing against a lot of other things as well.”
The national epidemic of declining attendance, most troublingly among students, has spurred athletic departments across the country to get creative in improving their football stadium fan amenities, while also investing heavily in the most obvious of solutions.
“If you take a photo of fans in any stands, a high percentage of them will have their heads down on their phones or iPads or whatever,” Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez said. “To keep fans in the stands, you have to keep up with the technology, so they can continue to use those things in the stadium.”
Concerned by the decline in national college football attendance, the Big Ten last year formed a game-day experience subcommittee, which found that boosted cellular service and Wi-Fi availability throughout a stadium was paramount.
Previously, Penn State was the only Big Ten program with stadium Wi-Fi. But this summer, Wisconsin announced it would be spending $6.2 million to install a Wi-Fi network at Camp Randall Stadium for the upcoming season. Earlier this year, Nebraska's regents approved $12.3 million for a Wi-Fi and sound system project for its stadium. Ohio State and Illinois could soon have Wi-Fi capability in their stadiums, as well.
http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/102758/schools-aiming-to-improve-fan-amenities
Go Gophers!!