Super Bowl Technologies - CNN

The most hi-tech Super Bowl of all time is here! Here is a look at some of the technologies (and many we didn’t get to!) from our CNN segment Saturday.

TICKETS? At a price…

If you want go to the big game plan to pay up. While the average face value of a ticket is $600 - $1200, your best bet is probably finding one at an online auction site and they don’t come cheap.

The average cost of a ticket on eBay is $4,875.

The average cost of a ticket on StubHub is about $3,500 but prices are coming down - and is believed to be because of the weather.

The least expensive ticket purchased this far has been $1,700, which was last weekend. The most expensive is currently $15,002, for club seats on the Steelers 50.

This game is already the highest grossing event in StubHub's history. A StubHub representative stated the success of sales was due to the avid Steeler/Packer fanbases.

Cost for the ads

Super Bowl ads have went from 40k in 1967 to an estimated $3 million for a 30 second spot.

HI-TECH STADIUM

The 1.2 billion dollar cowboys stadium was completed in 2009 and got a lot of attention with the technology inside including 3,000 HDTVs and the worlds largest worlds largest HDTV at 72 feet by 160 feet (20yd line to 20yd line). But there is also a lot of tech going on behind the scenes for the big game that is notably impressive.

Cell phones in stadium

The big carriers have spent millions amping up their services the past few months as they prepare for 100,000 people vying for bandwidth and talk time. They will monitor data in real-time and are prepared to bring in reinforcements if needed.

GPS

Using GPS technology the league is now able to track team buses and cars carrying teams, officials and VIPS in real time. It is also said that some credentials will use RFID for added security.

IT Infrastructure

- 884 free wireless access points scattered throughout the stadium provided by Cisco
- There is more than 8 million feet of Ethernet cabling
- 260 miles of fiber optics to support all the connections
- 120+ servers and 100T-bytes of data storage

With all that said make sure to pepper in some of these stats while watching the game with friends to sound smart with your cheesehead on or terrible towel waving proud!