Touchdown! RootMetrics reviews mobile performance across each NFL stadium

1-21-15 | Mike Parker

Introduction

For 17 weeks out of the year, fans pack the biggest stadiums in the country to watch football teams go head-to-head in pursuit of the ultimate prize. Thanks to a large focus on fans’ mobile life, the NFL has helped to deliver a unique and interactive experience each time you visit a stadium. And as those stadiums continue to add more seats and sell more tickets, consumer demands and expectations also continue to rise.

Those expectations aren’t just about who scores the most touchdowns on the gridiron anymore. With 91% of adults in the US now carrying a mobile phone*, a large focus of consumer demand is now based around mobile performance. Hence, if a venue’s network reliability is bad, it’s more likely to have a negative impact on a fan’s stadium experience, regardless of what happens for 60 minutes on the field.

Think about what you use your mobile phone for at the stadium. You might use it to update social media, send pictures from your seats to friends, stream highlights of other games, or check on your fantasy team. And like all consumers, you expect to carry out those tasks without service interruptions or connection failures—no matter where you go during the day. In the mobile age, those aren’t unreasonable expectations. To that end, stadiums face pressure to provide every ticketholder with the highest quality of mobile connectivity on game day.

Testing the NFL’s mobile experience

Ask any coach and they’ll tell you it’s a difficult thing to win in the NFL. But just as it’s tough for teams to win on any given Sunday, it’s also difficult for mobile carriers to provide reliable network access inside the stadium. A number of variables play into this. Everything from older venues being built long before the advent of mobile technology to congestion to dense building materials can take a toll on network performance.

That being said, not all NFL stadiums are created equal. Your experience may be drastically different from one stadium to the next. So, in the spirit of competition, we tested all four major networks at all 31 NFL venues to show you how the stadiums compared.

With a large focus of consumer demand based around mobile performance, stadiums face pressure to provide ticketholders with the highest quality of mobile connectivity on game day.

How we test

To evaluate how well each network handles typical consumer data demands, we use off-the-shelf smartphones to test network data performance under typical conditions at densely populated event venues across the US, with each venue tested at least once per year. Testing is conducted during the entirety of each event; samples are collected both while seated and while walking along concourses, near concession areas, and other publicly available areas. In addition to capturing download and upload speed, we test each network’s data performance during consumer-based activities such as checking email or during web/app usage. The top-performing data network(s) at each venue earns our RootScore Award as a mark of excellence in our consumer-focused testing.

Testing at playoff venues

It’s playoff time, and the competition is heating up. That means every game now commands more attention, and each stadium will be packed with a sellout crowd. This will put even more pressure on carriers to provide a high-quality mobile experience to ticketholders.

Because of this, we’ve compared network performance across the remaining eight venues where a playoff game will be (or has already been) played, excluding Levi's Stadium. We examine two areas for data testing: reliability and speed. Our speed testing looks at the median download and upload times for each carrier’s network at these venues. Reliability testing considers if you can connect to the data network, and then stay connected until your task is complete – and any failures that may occur during each process.

For this report, we focus on reliability success rates for getting connected and staying connected during our web/app testing, which serves as a good proxy for overall data reliability. We use a high bar in our data reliability testing and look for carriers to offer at least a 97% success rate in our web/app testing. This threshold reflects performance that would pose little to no noticeable disruptions in your everyday mobile life.

In the chart below, we’ve marked web/app performance above 97% as “Excellent” with a corresponding dot for each carrier, where applicable.

venues

Our venue rankings are based on an average of all networks’ RootScores at each venue, weighted by the estimated national percentage of subscribers for each network. In other words, performance scores from networks with more customers are weighted heavier than scores from networks with fewer customers.

The Carolina Panthers finished the season leading their division at 15-1. Data reliability also fared very well at Carolina's home field of Bank of America Stadium, which ranked #2 in our data performance testing. Of all playoff venues, Bank of America Stadium also achieved the second-highest composite score in our rankings at 87.1. AT&T was particularly strong there, recording its fastest median download speed (14.7 Mbps) at any NFL venue and a perfect rate of 100% for staying connected in our web/app reliability testing. Verizon also fared well for data reliability at the venue, as we were able to get connected to the network 99.4% of the time.

At the other end of the rankings, Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati finished near the bottom of the 31 NFL venues in data performance at #28, qualifying as the lowest of the remaining playoff venues. This was due in part to slow speeds from all carriers during our testing at the stadium. The fastest median download speed we found at Paul Brown, for instance, was only 3.1 Mbps from AT&T.

A few other interesting points of reference:

Two of the remaining playoff venues scored in the top 10 of all 31 in data rank (Bank of America, University of Phoenix)

When comparing performance at playoff venues, Verizon led all networks in total data wins with six

Sprint’s 35.8 Mbps median download speed at University of Phoenix Stadium was the fastest recorded in our testing, nearly doubling the second-highest speed of 18.8 Mbps recorded by Verizon at FedEx Field

A look ahead to the big game

The biggest game of the NFL season is coming up at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA on Sunday, February 7. Since an event with this magnitude requires unprecedented demands that go beyond the scope of a typical game, extra steps will be taken by networks to ensure a high-quality mobile experience.

Some of those steps may include the following:

DAS (Distributed Antenna Systems)

This is a network of spatially distanced antenna nodes that provides mobile service within a specific area or structure. Think of it as having a separate localized network connection within the venue itself. While this should boost network performance in a high-traffic area, the technology can be limited when more than one carrier uses the same DAS.





This is a network of spatially distanced antenna nodes that provides mobile service within a specific area or structure. Think of it as having a separate localized network connection within the venue itself. While this should boost network performance in a high-traffic area, the technology can be limited when more than one carrier uses the same DAS. Wi-Fi offloading

Routing traffic onto Wi-Fi access points has proven to be a very effective means of taking the strain off data networks. It’s also a win for consumers, as jumping on Wi-Fi allows connectivity without eating into data plans. Expect to see this strategy used at Levi’s for the big game.





Routing traffic onto Wi-Fi access points has proven to be a very effective means of taking the strain off data networks. It’s also a win for consumers, as jumping on Wi-Fi allows connectivity without eating into data plans. Expect to see this strategy used at Levi’s for the big game. COWs and COLTs

COWs (Cellular on Wheels) and COLTs (Cellular on Light Wheels) are temporary network-boosting options that are often used at large-capacity events. As the names suggest, both are essentially portable cell satellites that are easily movable where needed.

Here’s the good news: Levi’s is the newest stadium in the NFL and was designed in part to do a better job of handling heavy network traffic. So far, the extra steps seem to be paying off. During our testing throughout the regular season, Levi’s finished with the top composite score of all 31 NFL venues. Here are the results we tested for at Levi’s earlier in the year:

levis

As far as data reliability goes, performance was generally good across the board. Two carriers in particular scored as excellent when getting connected: Verizon (99.5%) and T-Mobile (99.3%). AT&T (97.8%) also tested well in getting connected, with Sprint (81.9%) experiencing minor difficulties in both getting and staying connected.

It’s important to note, however, that these numbers are subject to change based on the equipment and extra measures the venue will put in place for the game. While the results from our earlier testing aren’t a guarantee, they suggest that Levi’s Stadium does offer a strong baseline of performance.

The final standings

While fans were glued to the action on the field all season, we were keeping our eye on what was happening off the field. Our highlight reel for how each network performed at each venue is as follows:

carrier-sections

Ranking all stadiums: Explore for yourself

The table below gives you a broad perspective of how all 31 NFL venues performed on all four major networks. Full details for each venue can be seen in more detail by viewing the individual RootScore Reports.

table