Fourth-Generation Network Expansion Across League Venues
The National Basketball Association and the Women’s National Basketball Association are partnering with AT&T to install the fourth generation of their High Speed Arena Network infrastructure, rolling out the technology starting with the 2026-27 season as reported by CNET. The upgrade aims to keep pace with soaring consumer data usage, live streaming demands, and complex broadcast requirements inside pro basketball arenas. According to Ken DeGennaro, executive vice president of media operations and technology at the NBA, every tip-off generates exponentially more video angles, higher definition streams, and real-time tracking data than previous generations could comfortably support.
The upgraded infrastructure is being implemented across all 30 venues where the NBA operates. Initial deployment locations include the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, Barclays Center in New York City, United Center in Chicago, American Airlines Center in Dallas, State Farm Arena in Atlanta, and Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. While preliminary installations align with the upcoming season calendar, the official, system-wide launch of the updated High Speed Arena Network is scheduled for July 2027.
Quadrupled Bandwidth and Redundant Architecture
The technical overhaul relies on more than 68,000 miles of AT&T fiber-optic cabling alongside completely new networking equipment installed throughout each facility. This combination delivers four times the bandwidth capacity of the outgoing infrastructure. DeGennaro noted that an average professional basketball game currently utilizes about 118 distinct streams of high-quality, low-latency data.
The majority of this video content returns as uncompressed feeds operating at approximately 250 megabits per second per stream, creating immense throughput requirements across the network. These feeds encompass live broadcast production, in-arena entertainment displays, studio programming produced by the league and regional sports networks, mobile viewing feeds, and virtual signage. To protect against potential outages, these streams are split for redundancy and resiliency.
Joe Drygas, vice president of global enterprise solutions at AT&T Business, explained that venue engineering goes beyond laying server racks and fresh fiber. In selected facilities, engineering teams have broken ground to route fiber-filled conduit from multiple independent directions, eliminating single points of failure. Furthermore, AT&T operates a dedicated engineering unit running 24-hour network telemetry, predictive capacity modeling, and automated traffic rerouting to bypass localized bottlenecks.
Expanded Partnerships and Fan Connectivity
Alongside the infrastructure rollout, AT&T, the NBA, and the WNBA announced an extension of their comprehensive marketing partnership. Under the agreement, AT&T continues to serve as the official connectivity partner for the leagues, as well as the NBA G League, USA Basketball, and NBA Take-Two Media.
WNBA star and Las Vegas Aces center A’ja Wilson praised the continued collaboration in an official statement, noting that the league’s rapid growth requires committed corporate partners to invest in its operational future. Beyond backend broadcasting, AT&T is also leveraging the upgraded architecture to enhance fan-facing mobile experiences, utilizing tools such as its Turbo Live service to prioritize mobile data traffic for spectators inside crowded arenas who are uploading media and streaming live content during games.