No fan Wi-Fi in seating bowl at Northwestern's New Ryan Field
According to a series of posts on X from what appears to be the official account of New Ryan Field at Northwestern University, there is no fan-facing Wi-Fi network at the new $875 million stadium, and only cellular service for Verizon customers.
@NewRyanField invested heavily to create the fastest mobile internet speeds of any college football stadium
— New Ryan Field (@NewRyanField) October 10, 2026
This next generation 5G system is enabling internet speeds 30x-50x faster than stadium wifi even with a full stadium
Verizon chose to fully invest & integrate into it…
During last week's inaugural game at the 35,000-seat venue, scattered social media posts reported spotty connectivity in and around the arena. Most of those complaints, however, were lost in the overall enthusiastic response to the well-appointed stadium, which has high-end finishes including seatbacks and wide legroom for the bowl seating.
Stadium IT Forum's "field scouts," however, reported that they could not even connect to the venue's Wi-Fi until halftime, and even then the connection was weak and not consistent. According to one of the New Ryan Field posts on X, the venue does have fan-facing Wi-Fi, but only to serve areas like entry gates and not the seating bowl.
The choice was to either go with a 30x-50x faster next gen 5G system or a current gen wifi that would be out of date within the next year or two
— New Ryan Field (@NewRyanField) October 10, 2026
There is fan wifi available for mission critical uses (eg gates) but internet speed in the bowl is based on your carrier for now
According to one of the X posts, the stadium is claiming that it has a "next gen 5G system" for its distributed antenna system (DAS), the internal shared stadium cellular infrastructure that was built by Verizon. However, also according to the post, while AT&T and T-Mobile have agreed to participate on the DAS, "AT&T & T-Mobile haven't yet chosen to do the work but are expected to do so in early 2027."
While Verizon customers should have good connectivity, the questions that remain to be answered is what other carrier customers are supposed to do. Part of the stadium game-day experience calls on fans to use the stadium app for services like ticketing and reduced-price concessions, but if those fans don't have good connectivity such activities may be impossible to complete. The stadium's FAQ page has no information regarding cellular or Wi-Fi services available.
Northwestern is hosting Ball State today for the second game ever at New Ryan Field. We have calls and emails in to Verizon and stadium officials, and will update this post as we learn more.
