When 70,000 screaming fans enter Levi’s® Stadium in Santa Clara for Sunday’s Super Bowl LX, few will be thinking about the cutting-edge networking and security that make it all possible.

That’s because the NFL, Levi’s® Stadium, and key technology partner Cisco ensure a live (not to mention global!) experience that’s nothing short of dazzling. But one that’s so seamless and secure that it promises to be all but invisible to fans — despite spiraling demands for bandwidth and speed, and unprecedented security threats.

As an Official Technology Partner of the NFL, Levi’s® Stadium and the San Francisco 49ers, Cisco sits at the epicenter of ensuring that football’s biggest night is a resounding success. Building on a longstanding partnership with the venue and the league, Cisco will be essential to delivering fast and reliable Wi-Fi, seamless digital fan experiences, and secure network operations. 

Earlier this week, Cisco led a Levi’s® Stadium walkthrough of press and analysts that highlighted much of the technology that will power that great fan experience — as well as Cisco’s longstanding partnership with the stadium and the NFL.

And as Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research emphasized, the stadium walkthrough underscored Cisco’s unique ability to integrate networking and security into an integrated, intuitive whole.

“From the tour of Levi's®,” he said, “it's pretty clear that the work Cisco has done in bringing together this whole concept of secure networking has become real.”  

Whether Taylor Swift or the NFL, a network foundation for any demand

When Levi’s® Stadium was chosen to host this year’s Super Bowl, a massive technology overhaul was implemented. And Costa Kladianos, EVP and head of technology for the San Francisco 49ers explained, that demanded a network and security backbone that could handle just about anything thrown at it.

“We now have the world’s largest outside 4k video boards,” Kladianos said from within the stadium’s brand-new Cisco data center. “And we replaced our sound system, our LED screens, and all our production systems. So, we worked with Cisco to combine this as our main data center. Just about everything that runs the stadium runs through here.”

Among the technologies running through the new data center is Cisco Wi-Fi 7. Levi’s® Stadium is the first of its kind to implement Wi-FI 7 on such a large scale. And Matt Swartz, distinguished engineer at Cisco, stressed its importance.

“The team did a beautiful job helping us get ready with Wi-Fi 7,” he said. “Every year we see more traffic, and that calls for more wireless network flexibility. It’s paramount at a large-scale sporting event  because people are live streaming from the second they walk into the stadium. It requires a very flexible and scalable wireless infrastructure.”

Swartz believes that Cisco’s latest Wi-Fi technology offers unmatched capabilities.

“I'm pretty excited for Levi’s® Stadium to have the latest, greatest Wi-Fi technology,” Swartz said. “This is the fourth generation of our high-density offering for stadiums. It's got Wi-Fi 7, it's six gigahertz, but it's also the fourth generation of what we call hyper-directional, which has enabled us to service fans securely and effectively at distance. That used to be a challenge in Wi-Fi.”

Anish Patel, director of stadium and wireless engineering for the NFL, shared his own thoughts on the importance of a secure, resilient network.

“Anyone that shows up to an event like a Super Bowl is taking pictures and wanting everyone to know that they're there,” he said. “And that puts a lot of weight on the uplink of the network.”

Added Kladianos, “our previous stadium record was Taylor Swift for upload. That demographic is very tech savvy, so there's a lot of streaming. But we think this will break that record.”

None of which scares Patel.

“In 2012, at the Super Bowl we had around 300 gigabytes total data uploaded,” he said, “Now we're breaking 35 to 40 terabytes like it's nothing.”

A massive secure global event

The Super Bowl is by some measures the single biggest annual event on the planet. So inevitably, it draws the attention of cybercriminals — lots of them.

George Griesler, senior director of cybersecurity for the NFL led the tour through a visit to the stadium’s security operations center. And an extensive yet intuitive array of screens revealed the depth of Cisco’s role in NFL security.

“When we started,” Griesler recalled, “we were blind to a lot of what was going on, and we decided that this was not any way to do cybersecurity. So, we partnered with Cisco and essentially put Cisco in front of inbound and outbound traffic. And this extended to networks that are used for back-of-house vendors, NFL staff, NFL control. We wanted to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of all networks.”

As Griesler emphasized, that bevy of screens offer comprehensive yet highly intuitive network visibility, threat awareness, and response, combining insights from a wide range of Cisco sources, including Splunk, a Cisco company; Cisco ThousandEyes; Cisco Talos Intelligence Group; Cisco Umbrella, Cisco Secure Firewall, and Cisco Meraki.

Griesler stressed that these integrated solutions enable his teams to see far beyond the stadium itself and to get ahead of threats, before they cause potential disruptions.

“With Cisco technology and now with Splunk on top of it,” Griesler said, “we've been able to not only provide that defensive capability, but provide the visualization to provide the dashboard, to provide the metrics, to see what's actually going on in real time, which has been an amazing benefit for us.”

For Kerravala, the security operations center spotlighted the critical importance of integrating network and security.

“When they showed us the dashboards,” he said, “they've got Meraki, they've got Splunk, they've got ThousandEyes. It’s a combination of security and networking. And from an NFL perspective, it would be hard to make sure the fans are safe and nothing is compromised if these domains hadn't been brought together.”

A partnership built on shared commitment

Cisco’s impact across the broader NFL ecosystem only stands to grow, especially as the NFL — and Super Bowl — continue to expand as a global phenomenon. Currently, Cisco boasts official NFL Club and Stadium partnerships with the New England Patriots, Miami Dolphins, Arizona Cardinals, Buffalo Bills, Las Vegas Raiders, Chicago Bears, Carolina Panthers and a stadium partnership with AT&T Stadium.

“It’s really an honor working with the NFL,” said Cory Minton, Splunk’s field CTO. “The NFL has been a great customer of Splunk and has used Splunk to power their security operations for their global events. This isn't just a U.S. game; it goes around the world. And Splunk's excited to deliver the technology that they use in their cybersecurity operations center.”

“When you think about the power of Cisco and the network and the enforcement that we can bring in with Splunk,” Minton continued, “It's really beautiful to see it brought to life in one of the coolest events of the year.”

Rob McQueen, Cisco’s vice president for global sponsorships, believes that the opportunity to connect and secure such a cool event is the result of a partnership that runs deep.

“We're in our fifth year of our partnership with the NFL,” McQueen concluded. “But they were a Cisco customer prior to us ever doing a sponsorship. So, I think it is a real case of them loving our product and trusting our product. The NFL have been fantastic partners.”