How Much Will Pro Venues Spend on Technology Refresh Projects?

Over the next decade, roughly $9.8 billion will be invested in stadium technology across the top five U.S. leagues. About two-thirds of that total ($6.4 billion) will go toward system refreshes. In all, we project 900 discrete refresh projects across 144 venues, averaging $640 million per year.

What’s driving these numbers?

Virtually every professional stadium today is equipped with Wi-Fi, DAS, IPTV, LED displays, bowl audio, broadcast networks, and other core IT systems. What began as amenities have become indispensable infrastructure — systems that must be monitored, managed, and refreshed on predictable schedules. Viewed individually, each refresh may not seem daunting. Taken together, they amount to significant recurring costs and future capital commitments that venue owners will inevitably shoulder in full unless they devise more efficient strategies.

Our analysis includes the technology costs associated with 10 new pro stadiums set to open within the next decade—each bringing substantial tech investments as part of their initial construction. Importantly, these new venues will also contribute to overall refresh spending as their systems age, adding to the ongoing $6.4 billion in upgrades projected for existing venues.

Full disclosure: our projections carry an unknown margin of error, since venue spending data remains private. To build our model, we combined public sources with insights from our experience working on technology systems across more than 100 venues to develop these estimates. The actual numbers could be different—but the key point is their magnitude and inevitability.