Utah football fans get a stadium upgrade they can like and finally share

As the bright lights shone down on the fans at Rice-Eccles Stadium last week, you could catch plenty of Utah fans scrolling on their phones, smiling for pictures and peeking at the slate of games on college football’s opening weekend.

The internet has become more than a luxury for many, it’s a necessity.

But, for diehard Utes fans who fill this stadium for Utah games, it’s been lacking for the last decade. At the beginning of a game, hours before the bowl of Rice-Eccles gets packed with red, white and black, early birds might get a few cellular bars here and there.

Once the stadium filled up, however, a connection was non-existent for those with even the best cell phone plans.

Texts went green.

Emails didn’t send.

Videos buffered.

Even as the wins piled up, the experience dragged for Utah fans young and old.

“Any signal or anything in here was garbage,” Utah fan McKay Downs said while watching the Utes defeat Southern Utah on Thursday. “You could maybe text. But, anything else, like checking scores of other games, like in between breaks, you couldn’t do it at all. It was bad.”

That all changed last week when the University of Utah announced a partnership with Boldyn Networks and Extreme Networks to deploy a Wi-Fi 6E system at Rice-Eccles Stadium. According to the university’s website, the new free network can service a sell-out crowd of 53,644 fans.

“It’s huge for our fan experience,” Utah’s Associate Athletic Director for Facilities, Operations and Capital Projects Gavin Gough told The Salt Lake Tribune. “It’s huge for our fans to be able to have connectivity at the stadium.

“This is something that we’ve been working on for several years. It is kind of funny, we want the fans to focus on the field, the video board, and we put so much effort into that, but at the end of the day, we still want our fans to stay connected.”

Before arriving at Utah’s contest vs. Southern Utah on Thursday night, Downs was unaware of the new Wi-Fi network in his favorite college football venue. When he found his seat in the upper bowl of Rice-Eccles Stadium, a fan next to him was scrolling on their phone, liking memes and checking Utah’s roster.

Downs was in disbelief when he found out that Wi-Fi finally arrived at Rice-Eccles Stadium, let alone, that it worked the entire game.

“I connected to it right away, and I was pleasantly surprised,” Downs said. “It worked really well the entire time. Everything I’ve done — pulled up a video, checked a score, texted my family and sent pictures — all worked easily and didn’t take forever. I was very surprised. I did not think it was going to be good.”

‘This isn’t your run-of-the-mill Wi-Fi system’

Inside Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, famously known as The Swamp, a curious Gough studied the Gators’ Wi-Fi system servicing tens of thousands of fans in 2023.

That wasn’t the only trip Gough and other university officials made.

In 2019, Utah’s associate athletics director studied operations at the San Francisco 49ers Levi’s Stadium during the 2019 Pac-12 Championship. During each visit to USC’s world-renowned LA Memorial Coliseum, which underwent a $315 million renovation in 2019, Gough was in the back of the press box seeing how the Trojans worked their systems.

At each stop, the Utes were able to piece together a puzzle of how to best work with Utah’s fans in Salt Lake City

“This isn’t your run-of-the-mill Wi-Fi system you see in an office building,” Gough said. “These products are designed for, as I mentioned, high-density use. So thousands and thousands of people are connecting at the same time. We were able to experience the back of house side of it but also as fans going, connecting and seeing what that experience was like.

“At the end of the day, that’s what we’re focused on.”

So what did Gough find in the depths of bandwidth, cables and modems? Stadiums were filled to the brim with fans snapping pictures with friends and family alike. Then, they’d later upload it to social media sites like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and X, the app formerly known as Twitter.

A glimpse of that magic took place at Rice-Eccles on Thursday night as fans in the MUSS, Utah’s student section, and throughout the stadium could be seen snapping and sharing photos, capturing moments they’d remember for a lifetime.

“What that means is people are using their phones to share or to capture that special moment,” Gough said. “That’s where there’s a little bit of excitement when you think about it from that standpoint.

“The network is used to enhance the fan experience. We want them there in person. There’s nothing like a college football game in person.”

Alongside the enhanced connectivity, Utah is now leveraging its new Wi-Fi system to improve the experience fans have with the Utah 360 app, which allows fans to get behind-the-scenes content of Utah athletes and also empowers Name Image and Likeness initiatives.

More importantly on a game day, it also helps fans order food and drinks.

Using the app, fans can order concessions from their seats with a stable connection instead of waiting in long, congested lines at halftime. Jeff and Jace Callor, a father and son who have been Utah fans for over 20 years, were excited, but skeptical when they found out about the new Wi-Fi upgrades.

Knowing the issues with connectivity in the past, they’ve lived by one rule when attending games at Rice-Eccles Stadium when wanting to get food or drinks.

“You get here early for concessions or you go after halftime,” Jayce said. “You don’t go to halftime. It was too congested.”

Jeff, his father, seconded that rule.

“It was bad,” Jeff said. “It was really bad.”

Gough said, with certainty, that online ordering would improve with Utah’s inaugural season in the Big 12. That means fans will not only be able to get back to their seats quicker, but the stress on cashiers and food workers in Rice-Eccles Stadium will be relieved.

Instead of waiting for hundreds of fans to place their orders in a line, servers can call a person’s name, hand them their food and have less stress while working.

The mobile ordering has been in place for years at RES, but it was basically useless without a reliable network.

The Utes have that now.

“That was also at the forefront of our minds as we looked at this,” Gough said “They’ve had it in place for several years. Now with the connectivity piece in place, we really can take advantage of the existing mobile ordering system with our point of sale technology.”

And, with a new high-speed network, the possibilities could be endless for Utah’s marketing team in the future.

‘College athletics is changing rapidly’

A massive black and white QR code spun in a circle on Utah’s 122-foot video board above the Ken Garff Red Zone at RES, inviting fans to take selfies that could later be shared with the sellout crowd of Utes fans.

QR codes have been the talk of college football lately, particularly in the Big 12. Before it was banned by the NCAA, Oklahoma State introduced helmet codes, which would’ve allowed fans to donate directly to OSU’s NIL fund. It was the latest thing a program has introduced in the NIL space, as the country prepares for the seemingly imminent revenue-sharing future.

While Utah continues to analyze and improve its gameday atmosphere, Gough is excited about the possibilities that could come with Rice-Eccles Stadium’s Wi-Fi systems. He, and the rest of Utah’s marketing team, are keeping their eyes open about the realities of college football and what modern fans want in the new world of social media.

“I always have that lens on the gameday atmosphere,” Gough said. “It’s really starting there being in touch and in tune with what other people are doing, but also trying to be mindful of emerging trends.

“The landscape of college athletics is changing rapidly. We’re always thinking about where we’re going, and where we’re headed as an industry, and trying to see what’s around the corner to the best of our ability. But, at the end of the day, we know our core principles at Utah come down to our fans and what they’re passionate about and the home field advantage that we have in the atmosphere.”

While Utah’s new network is in its early stages, it already passed its first test with Utah’s fans this week.

Just ask Wain Allen, who was unaware of the new network until an hour before the game.

As he combed his hand through his white beard and placed his finger on his phone, he gave an in-person test to the Wi-Fi network.

“Before this, it was so busy that it took more than 10 minutes to load,” Allen said while connecting to the Wi-Fi. “This is a noticeable improvement.”

Even for older fans like him, who don’t spend too much time on their phone and direct their focus solely on the game, the enhancements bring a newfound positivity.

“I will be mildly excited about this,” he said.

But whatever you might think of the Utes’ new network, you should now be able to share that message from inside the stadium.

For Gough and Utah, following years of work, that’s all they could’ve asked for.