Inside the 49ers' stadium tech stack: cybersecurity, WiFi at scale, and the Super Bowl challenge

Welcome to the show. How are you?

How you doing? Nice to meet you guys.

Thank you so much. Sorry. No, no, we're we're good. We go for three hours every day. Yes, no problem. Um, please uh introduce yourself since it's the first time on your show.

Yeah, so I'm uh Costa Claos. I'm the EVP of technology for the San Francisco 49ers and Levi Stadium and a big fan of the show. So excited to be here.

Yeah. Uh, explain to us like what that means and what your day-to-day is like and what the choices you're facing are.

So, there's never like a regular day-to-day. It's so my team, we're responsible for everything from um you know getting into the stadium, the ticketing systems, the uh the point of sale systems for food and beverage, the Wi-Fi, the network infrastructure, uh the cyber security of the stadium, u making sure that on game day we're like the referees. You don't notice us and you just have a great time and you know cheer on the team which is hopefully the 49ers. But

yeah, how has technology in a football stadium evolved? Like I uh we we were going back to like the first broadcast was the the Los Angeles Rams before they moved to St. Louis. Then they went back and it made sense because, you know, Hollywood is in there. They're very forward thinking. But uh how much have you seen an evolution in the technology that goes into, you know, broadcasting football game?

Well, it's crazy. I've been doing this for about 25 years now and um you know, in a bunch of different sports and it just used to be, you know, you go to the game, you watch the game, you eat your food, and you go home. Now it's different because it ha you have to have a technology experience. The reason why is

I mean staying at home sounds like a good uh proposition. You have your big TV, you have your couch, you have your food. Um so we want to we want to make a reason to come to the park. We want to enhance that experience. Um so how can we get it to be kind of a social experience? How can we get something that'll get you off your couch and coming there and having a great time? Because I mean it's also not cheap to come to a game, you know, it's it's a significant uh dollar value from your wallet and entertainment dollar. So, we want to make sure that you have the the best experience possible.

And then, I mean, you look at the people watching sports, what are we doing now? We're, you know, we're all on our phones, you know, we're all technology, we all want more data. Um, so it's like it's not trying to get people off their phones. It's like, how do we

stats, more plays, um, know more things about their their favorite players, and really bring the action to you. And then, I mean, with us being kind of an influencer economy, everybody wants to show show off where they are, right? Like what a better place to show off where you are and having a good time there and then your friends are going to be jealous and then come and enjoy the game as well, right?

Rank the most like rank your tech stack based on importance on game day like specifically during the game. And I want this in the at the top.

No, no, no, no, [laughter] no. But I'm talking about like when like if if you're just an observer and you're enjoying the game and you're experiencing, you know, a bunch of different sets of technology, like what are what is like the average person not noticing that is like going on in the background? you're fixated on.

Yeah. So, I mean, hopefully they're not noticing it because that means it's working, right? Um, so I I think you start from the foundation, the infrastructure, the network, the network infrastructure, and you know, I tell everyone they're like, "What is that?" I'm like, "That's the plumbing of our organization. That's that's where everything flows." That's to make sure without that we have absolutely nothing. We're we're cooked. So, I mean, uh, you know, Cisco is a great partner of ours and and we work together. It's it helps that we're in Silicon Valley. Um, which it helps, but also hurts because everyone knows technology in there, right? So everyone coming to the game, they expect the best. So which is a great challenge and one of the reasons why I went there. So that that that infrastructure has to be solid to deliver you Wi-Fi. Um and there's just more and more need for it, right? We have to keep scaling it up now, you know, with AI coming down the pipe. Everyone's, you know, looking up their their LLMs and uh on their phones obviously sharing their uh experience and um you know, with advanced stats and things like that, it has to be um frictionless for them, right? Um, and so that network infrastructure has to be solid, not only what's going on in the stands, it's the fans, but on the field, too. We can't have, you know, scoreboards go down. We can't have a uh coach comms go down. So, we work together with the NFL um to do that. So, that's incredibly important to us. And then with that handinand is actually our cyber security posture.

Okay.

Um I mean, we could have the best systems in the world, but you know, one hack, you know, one uh cyber security incident and it's a it's a massive problem. Yeah.

Is that mostly like DOS just like come just like adversarial hackers just trying to like take you offline, screw things up, create economic damages or is it specifically like break in and steal credentials everything? All of the above?

I imagine every day there's somebody that would love to like broadcast onto the jumbotron.

Yeah. Like this crypto scam or something. I don't know. What's the shape of the threat?

There is so many different threats. Like I mean you just named Phil and you're scratching the surface. um just because we're so visible, you know, every Sunday the world's looking at us and you know, it's it's a it's a visible attack vector. So, I mean, we have a an incredible cyber security team. Uh we work again with the NFL. Um and then, you know, share knowledge with other teams cuz, you know, we're we're competitors on the field, but colleagues off the field. Um and so we work together to make sure that we're mitigating risk and you know, it's not if we're attacked, it's when you're attacked. So, we try and make sure to to stop that. You have to be proactive and instead of reactive. If we're reactive, we've already lost the battle.

Yeah. Is NAB important for you?

NAB?

Yeah. The national

the show?

Yeah, the show. Like we go for for the camera stuff here. We try and learn a great show. Yeah, we do send a big

I'm wondering if that's like important to you or if there's a different uh conference where you're you're meeting more people and talking to more suppliers.

No, we do send a lot of people to NAB, our engineering team. I mean, it's it's definitely important to us because look at our our broadcast size. We have uh right now I believe the largest outdoor 4K video screens uh in the league. So we we do send a lot of people there. I mean you want to be around the best in the brightest. We have a lot of shows

that that we go to. But it's not only you don't want to stay inside the industry. Um I always say you learn your best when you're looking outside. So who's doing what? Great. Doesn't have to be from sports and take that.

Then what is what is like the top down uh mandate or standards that are shared from the NFL? Like there's obviously broadcast standards if you're delivering to ESPN or ABC or NBC, but um what what does need to be standard across the NFL broadly?

Yeah. I mean, the NFL has their their standards across the NFL in terms of, you know, Wi-Fi, infrastructure, connectivity,

expectations. Every team has

Exactly. But, you know, you know, us at the 49ers, you know, our team always overperforms on the field. You know, we're always expected to win a championship. You know, that's what we try and do. I mean, it's difficult, but that's like our goal. So, you know, with with me being in and the um and the technology team, you know, we're trying to be the best. Again, we're in Silicon Valley, so we expect more. So, I want to go over and above and deliver an experience that's not just kind of the minimum. It's an experience where you're going to come there and say, "Wow, Levi Stadium's unbelievable." Like, this is this is insane. Let's let's uh let's go there. This is something different that maybe, you know, somebody like a Disney should copy, right? Or or Starbucks or somebody else in the industry. Sorry if they're not sponsored. But

how much different is uh uh the the Super Bowl specifically? Is there more demands on your organization for a bigger event or is it sort of the same as any other game?

Yeah, I mean the Super Bowl is one of the world's largest arguably the world's largest uh sporting event um especially in this country and the the demands are greater and we work again handinhand with the NFL um as their event uh the the capacity the the Wi-Fi the bandwidth it always sets records wherever they go. I mean, our the previous record at our stadium was um Taylor Swift, uh which was an incredible concert, by the way. Um and uh I mean, her her demographic super techsavvy. Soon as she came out on stage, people are, you know, putting up their phones and sharing that and and it blew away our bandwidth records a couple years ago. And we expect this to go even higher. But that's a record that's always made to be broken because people are using more data, not less, right? So, we always have to prepare and scale up as well. Well, Jordy, anything else?

I mean, this have a lot more questions, but it was great having you on the show.

Yeah. Thanks so much for great to meet you. Thanks. Off. Let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the all-in-one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agent to deploy apps, servers, databases, and more. While Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security. And uh we have our next guest already here. He showed up a little bit early. We can bring him down. If he's down, I'll tell you about Console. Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, finance support, giving employees instant resolution, for access requests, and password resets.