But who will pay for upgrades, which include better Wi-Fi for luxury boxes?
Houston, Texas, is poised to host the Super Bowl in 2017 but, in the meantime, the NFL and local officials are trying to figure out who will foot the bill for upgrades including a $5 million Wi-Fi enhancement.
NRG Stadium, home of the Houston Texans National Football League team, will get a substantial makeover in the run-up to the big game that could ultimately cost in the neighborhood of $50 million, according to the Houston Chronicle.
NFL SVP of Events Peter O’Reilly said the stadium bidding committee agreed to the Wi-Fi upgrade and said NRG “is in a very good place at this stage in its stadium life, but there are opportunities to upgrade that are common across Super Bowl stadiums as they prepare and continue to make sure they are state of the art.”
O’Reilly said either Harris County officials or the stadium lessee, the Houston Texans, are required to foot the bill.
Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack has made it clear he doesn’t want to use public money to fund luxury upgrades at the stadium.
“I’m not about to vote to spend a single dollar of county money updating these luxury suites,” the Houston Chronicle quoted him as saying.
Super Bowls, festivals and other large events draw huge temporary build-outs from carriers and other network operators.
For instance, for the 2015 Super Bowl, held at the University of Phoenix’s stadium, AT&T upgraded the stadium distributed antenna system to support the 72,000 fans, and also dropped 23 DASs and small cells in the stadium area to provide blanket connectivity.
