Attendance at a sports event these days means the smell of popcorn, the roar of a crowd and robust Wi-Fi connectivity in a stadium filled with tens of thousands of smartphone-carrying fans. The first two experiences are a given; the last one takes some work.

Ericsson’s Peter Linder and SAS Institute’s Jenn Chase talk with theCUBE how their companies have collaborated on tech solutions in the sports world.

The 5G connected venue is one of many solutions provided by Ericsson AB, in concert with data management software and services provider SAS Institute Inc. It’s a challenge that requires sophisticated technology and creative solutions in a continually evolving environment where fan interest and business operations place huge demands on the network.

“What has happened very much over the last five years since we first connected a stadium with 5G is to evolve the fan experience,” said Peter Linder (pictured, left), head of thought leadership-North America at Ericsson. “More recently, we have had a private network component of it, where you can also support payment terminals and all the different business operations that take place at the venue. It’s sophisticated networks growing pretty much year over year for new things.”

Linder spoke with theCUBE’s Paul Gillin and Scott Hebner at SAS Innovate, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. He was joined by Jenn Chase (right), chief marketing officer and executive vice president at SAS Institute Inc., and they discussed how Ericsson and SAS have collaborated on tech solutions in the sports world. (* Disclosure below.)

Maximizing data for sports

In April, SAS announced an expanded partnership with the Orlando Magic, a men’s professional team in the National Basketball Association. Employing the SAS Viya data and AI platform, the Magic intends to use data for optimizing ticket sales forecasting and identifying key factors behind successful fan engagement, according to Chase.

“They have one of the most sophisticated data warehousing strategies that we see and, as a result, they’re able to just bring on new use cases because they can leverage that data,” she said. “They do an almost Spotify-like year-end wrap-up campaign to their season ticket holders, so they get to see the Magic’s experience and performance for games they [attended]. That’s really sophisticated.”

In-stadium networks must also be able to accommodate the needs of television partners broadcasting to millions of fans around the world. Broadcast cameras are now 5G connected, which requires providers such as Ericsson to balance capacity at the venue for virtual private networks.

“We connect professional TV cameras so you don’t have two guys running around with a cable behind the cameraman,” Linder explained. “You can connect the cameras over 5G today, but that means you have to have a consistent bandwidth. When we talk about network slicing or the ability to provide a virtual private network, it’s that we take part of the capacity and use it so it doesn’t interfere with the fan traffic. There are … a lot of new capabilities that are introduced in the network.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of SAS Innovate:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for SAS Innovate. Neither SAS Institute Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE