Earlier this year, Chase Center, home of the 7x NBA Champion Golden State Warriors, announced it would be the first sports venue to deploy Wi-Fi 6E. The latest standard of Wi-Fi runs on the 6 GHz spectrum and offers significantly faster speeds than Wi-Fi 6. The Warriors have partnered with Aruba Networks, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, to ensure high-quality Wi-Fi reaches every part of the venue as well as Thrive City, the entertainment and restaurant area that surrounds Chase Center.
The primary driver behind the deployment is to create the best possible fan experience. More and more fans are using their mobile devices as part of the experience of watching the Warriors. When Steph Curry starts pouring in three-pointers, people want to Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, and Tweet those moments. Also, the Chase Center mobile app is filled with ways to augment the fan experience, such as live trivia and video highlights. These types of fans are what Daniel Brusilovskly, VP of IT for the Warriors, refers to as "hyper-connected" fans. This is rapidly becoming the norm, and Wi-Fi 6E offers superior performance.
Prior to the Warriors – Knicks game on November 18th, I conducted a ZK Tour with Brusilovsky, where he described the thought process of how to deploy the network, shared some testing results, and gave me a peek into the data center. The complete video can be seen here:
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