Green Bay Packers: How Tech Keeps The NFL’s Smallest Team Competitive
IN DEPTH: The Green Bay Packers are in a city of 100,000 and are community owned. They are unique in US sports and technology keeps the team competitive on and off the field in the NFL
Extreme Networks
But good networks are essential for the Packers’ business as well. The installation project was a significant endeavour and one of the reasons partners Extreme Networks was selected was because of their experience with the NFL, for whom it is the official Wi-Fi analytics partner, and several other teams.
“We actually had a different Wi-Fi vendor before Extreme two years ago and they weren’t able to support a stadium,” he continues, adding that the choice was made in October 2014 and the first test was conducted in June 2015.
It was a joint effort between multiple groups, including a local Extreme partner in Wisconsin and even Verizon, who wanted to offload cellular traffic from its distributed antenna system (DAS) into the local network.
“There were at least five different groups who came together as one team to produce the result we have. Our LANM and Wi-Fi are so critical to our business, so without it we wouldn’t function. Considering the magnitude, we did a great job.”
Aesthetics were of key importance too, antennas are concealed and the Packers even worked with a local company to create a material that would allow the Wi-Fi signal to propagate from an access point while still being watertight.
There are more than 1,000 access points within Lambeau Field, of which 500-600 are located within the bowl of the stadium. And because the system is scalable, it can be extended to new areas, including the planned TitleTown district to the west of the stadium.
The Frozen Tundra
Green Bay is almost as famous for its weather as its football. Lambeau Field can get very cold and has the well-earned nickname of the ‘Frozen Tundra’. Superbowl II in 1967 was played there in temperatures of -26 degrees and in sharp winds and it’s still cold there in 2016; hardly ideal for people to take off their gloves and use their smartphones.
“When it’s -20, I don’t really want to get my phone out and it impacts the battery life the device as well as it drains [power] significantly,” admits Wichlacz.
“But in 2015 we didn’t have any bitterly cold games but it was still pretty cold and our numbers were still good so that was actually surprising to me, but we have a lot of indoor areas as well. The weather definitely impacts use but not as much as you might think.”
On the pitch
The team indirectly benefits from these developments but does Mike McCarthy ever knock on the IT department’s door, demanding a new suite of analytics software?
“There’s give and take between the players and the coaching staff and sometimes that translates into an action on our side in the football technology area,” says Wichlacz. “NFL coach is a bit like a teacher in a classroom so we ask ourselves how we can make that teacher most effective and what the tools they need are.”
But football technology is limited to practice only. The NFL imposes a certain type of technology for matches, in order to maintain the level playing field but also for commercial reasons.
“Technologies used on gameday have to be NFL approved,” he adds. “In fact, no technology that my team can provide can be used on gameday on the sidelines or the coaching booths. You don’t see anyone with a laptop, you see the [Microsoft] Surfaces and that’s it.”
“Outside gameday you can use anything you want. We can use whatever technology we think can help us win games, within the constraints of the business.”
