Miller Sports + Entertainment Hits a Home Run with Infoblox Universal DDI™
Miller Sports + Entertainment (MSE), the powerhouse behind Utah’s premier professional sports teams and world-class entertainment venues, set out to do more than just build a new ballpark for the Salt Lake Bees. Their vision: create a next-generation stadium that would redefine what it means to be a fan in the digital age. But to deliver on that promise, MSE needed a network foundation as modern and ambitious as the ballpark itself.
The network supporting The Ballpark at America First Square was designed to accommodate thousands of concurrent devices, a complex partner ecosystem (including giants like Levy and Ticketmaster), retail operations, media production and digital services across dozens of segmented environments—all with zero tolerance for downtime or lag.
The catch? MSE had just 60 days between construction turnover and opening day to get everything online. That meant critical network services had to be scalable, rapidly deployable, centrally managed and trusted to deliver flawless performance at every event.
Aaron Cook, MSE’s chief information officer, knew exactly what was at stake. In MSE’s prior work designing the Utah Jazz Delta Center, Infoblox had proven its worth by eliminating DNS and DHCP bottlenecks that had once caused slowdowns and delivering always-on performance for tens of thousands of devices. “When we deployed the Delta Center install, Infoblox handled tens of thousands of people getting on the network with no slowdown and no issues,” Cook recalls. “As we started planning the new ballpark, Infoblox was an immediate priority. We knew we needed a reliable wireless environment, and we knew we needed Infoblox to support it.”
With construction delays threatening the timeline, MSE and its long-time managed services partner NetCuras turned to Infoblox Universal DDI™, the cloud-managed platform for DNS, DHCP and IP address management (DDI) services. With Universal DDI, the team prebuilt every VLAN, DHCP scope, reservation and partner network offsite before the stadium even had power, speeding up the deployment at a moment when timing was critical. This enabled NetCuras to bring the entire DDI environment online within minutes of receiving power.
“We installed the servers, got on a meeting and tied them to the Infoblox Portal. It was quick and easy,” says Billy Byers, senior network engineer at NetCuras, who was leading his first Infoblox implementation. Despite construction wrapping up only days before the first game, Universal DDI came online smoothly and has remained stable ever since.
“Infoblox gave us a foundation we could trust from day one. Universal DDI delivered the stability and scale required to support a modern venue, even as demand surged. Having that level of confidence in our network lets us stay focused on delivering an exceptional fan experience.”
- Aaron Cook, CIO, Miller Sports + Entertainment
Inside the concrete structure, providing robust digital connectivity was a challenge. But with Universal DDI, the team built a high-performance Wi-Fi network capable of confidently supporting thousands of fans and guests, eliminating the need for a costly distributed antenna system (DAS) and avoiding an estimated $1.5 million in additional infrastructure costs. On opening day, DHCP traffic tripled as fans and partners connected to the wireless network, but Universal DDI absorbed the surge without a hitch.
“One of my biggest concerns going into opening day was whether DHCP would keep up once everyone connected, but Universal DDI handled thousands of addresses without hesitation. There was not a single hiccup,” Byers says.
With a modern DDI architecture in place, MSE now has the dependable, scalable network foundation needed to deliver the digital stadium experience fans expect. The new environment also positions the organization to adopt future smart venue innovations across its broader portfolio. As Cook puts it, “Infoblox gave us a foundation we could trust from day one. Universal DDI delivered the stability and scale required to support a modern venue, even as demand surged. Having that level of confidence in our network lets us stay focused on delivering an exceptional fan experience.”