CONNECTIVITY PRODUCTS & SERVICES
Access all areas: Creating a world-class
wireless experience for fans was a key
criteria for the Atlanta Braves’ SunTrust Park
When Major League Baseball’s
www.stadia-magazine.com September 2019
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Atlanta Braves moved from
its old Turner Field home,
the team wanted a new,
state-of-the-art venue that
would provide unforgettable fan experiences
that extended beyond the ballpark and
attract visitors even on non-game days.
The result is the 41,500-seat SunTrust Park,
which is part of The Battery Atlanta
entertainment district – a 1.5-million ft2
(139,000m2) mixed-use development.
The Atlanta Braves wanted to deliver the
best possible wireless experience among
today’s North American venues, providing
plenty of bandwidth without restrictions or
delays so fans can upload photos and stream
video. The team also wanted to streamline
infrastructure by connecting nearly every
building system and third-party vendor to
a single network.
To make this happen, the ballpark needed
cabling infrastructure that could support
the personal devices of over 40,000 fans,
along with the venue’s distributed antenna
system (DAS), 30 LED scoreboards, interactive
kiosks and digital signage, over 1,250 wireless
access points and over 1,350 screens.
In addition to this, the system was
specified to support a 5G cellular network,
10,000 ports and 800+ hotspots, radar
technology that captures player data, POS
systems, connectivity to a Ballpark app,
and suite control systems and displays.
“Some of the decisions you make with
cabling are life-of-the-building decisions,”
says Greg Gatti, vice president of IT for the
Atlanta Braves. “Futureproofing was very
important to us, knowing that we have the
ability to scale over time.”
Raising standards
With the stadium’s size and complexity,
standardization was important to Gatti
and his team, so when creating internal
cabling standards, they selected Belden
armored singlemode fiber and Category
6A cabling.
After determining that traditional
field-mount plugs wouldn’t fit inside the
weatherproof housings being installed on
the ballpark’s outdoor monitors, wireless
access points and security cameras, the
Atlanta Braves opted for Belden’s REVConnect
Connectivity System and used REVConnect
Field-Mountable Plugs. These plugs fit into
the housings, support up to 100W of power
and shortened termination time.
A single termination process is all that’s
required with REVConnect, regardless of the
device being installed – and the process can
be completed by technicians of all
experience levels, which helps limit the
amount of rework and retesting required.
“In a stadium environment, we need a lot
of flexibility in locations where we install
equipment, whether it’s TVs, wireless access
points, or cameras,” says Gatti.
To maintain standardization and ensure
quick and simple termination, the
REVConnect Connectivity System is now
standard for the remaining Battery Atlanta
building projects.
For the ballpark’s AV applications, Belden’s
4K Ultra HD Media Cable delivers 4K content
over 100m in a small and sleek design, with
100% shielding from noise interference.
Grass Valley, a Belden brand, provided
cameras and IP routing infrastructure for
the in-house production team to deliver the
game to the big screens around the ballpark,
making sure fans don’t miss any of the action.
Grass Valley LDX 86 WorldCam cameras
feature traditional HD/3G acquisition, as
well as the ability to upgrade to 4K UHD
and/or XtremeSpeed. The cameras also
deliver instant time-to-air with no internal
storage requirement.
When SunTrust Park opened for its very
first gameday, 10,708 devices – engaging
in 23,831 sessions and consuming 3.4TB
of data – were able to connect. The franchise
reached its goal of delivering an
unforgettable wireless experience, allowing
tens of thousands of people to access the
network at the same time. n
Belden supplied cabling
infrastructure to support every
fan connecting to the network
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