Andrew McIntyre received a polite round of applause from the SBJ Tech Week crowd Tuesday when it was unveiled that the new Nissan Stadium will host the Super Bowl in 2030. Equal applause was given when McIntyre (SVP, Technology and Innovation, Tennessee Titans and Nissan Stadium) said the stadium project remains on-time and on-budget.
Venue tech executives Katee LaPoff and Justin Stahl joined McIntyre on-stage to discuss “Cutting-Edge Technology and Strategic Road Maps for New Facilities.”
The trio knows the topic well, though from different viewpoints: LaPoff (CTO, Oak View Group) works for a company that’s serially developed arenas over the last five years, while McIntyre and the Titans are approaching the new $2.2B Nissan Stadium project’s February 2027 finish line. Stahl (CTO, United Center and The 1901 Project) and the United Center joint venture is just beginning the $7B 1901 Project mixed-use development around the Chicago arena.
In designing Nissan Stadium’s tech capabilities, McIntyre said the Titans have tried to understand prevailing tech trends and put down some foundational pieces, as well as some of the necessary requirements for Super Bowl hosting (including a muscular sound system). “So, when we start to design and build, whether it’s pathways, whether it’s cabling, infrastructure, fiber, try to look out three to five years,” he said. “You might not need it right when you launch, but you know you’re going to need it down the road.”
LaPoff called OVG’s approach “future flexible,” in which it’s trying to deploy what’s needed for a minimum viable project at opening, then enhancing where needed once the building is operating and gives an idea of its revenue generation ability. Some buildings might outperform what was expected and the tech backbone might need beefing up.
Site preparation is underway for the 1901 Project, which will encompass the second-busiest arena in the country, United Center, which runs roughly 265 events annually. Working alongside the 1901 Project’s patron experience designers has been enlightening for Stahl.
“Us IT folks, we’re not always the most empathetic and we’re just kind of slapping a sign somewhere and thinking that’s where something should go,” Stahl said. “It’s really intentional and as I said, it’s been a nice ‘why’ to make some of the decisions we have.”
The project will create a surrounding neighborhood from what’s primarily parking lots.
“We’ll have unticketed fans. We’ll have patrons that just happen to live in the neighborhood,” Stahl said. “Data is a pretty important piece to what we’re building the capability of because we now have our own fan that we need to build for.”
The 1901 Project has a unique mixed-use tech advantage with the United Center JV owning and controlling the entire project. That’s fairly rare in sports-adjacent mixed-use development; it’s normally much harder to wrangle all the different tech stacks into something cohesive, LaPoff said.
“You may be dealing with a hotel operator, a restaurant operator, a parking operator and each one of those comes with its own tech stack,” she said. “It’s the nexus of how do you move your guest from one system to the other that becomes the success factor.
“You have to build that language into the business deal. If you want a frictionless outcome, it has to be in the original deal.”
Before the group left the stage, they were asked for one thing they wanted people to know about them and their role.
“I work in technology,” said LaPoff. “But I’m a people person, damn it.”
