GAME-WORN LEVIS: Levi’s Stadium, shown here prior to the Saints-49ers preseason game on Aug. 18, turns 10 years old this month in Santa Clara, California. (AP Photo)
NFL’s biggest 4K videoboards coming in 2025
Levi’s Stadium is undergoing a $200 million facelift, a big chunk of which is to prepare for two high-profile events coming up in 2026 — the Super Bowl and FIFA World Cup.
The 10-year-old stadium is the first NFL facility to book both events in the same year, according to officials with the San Francisco 49ers, the NFL team that runs the publicly-owned building in Santa Clara, California.
The 49ers are financing 90% of the two-year project, with the Santa Clara Stadium Authority, the building owner, funding the balance for maintenance and capital expenditure work required for a decade-old facility, she said.
“It’s time to start reinvesting,” said Francine Melendez Hughes, Levi’s Stadium’s executive vice president and general manager entering her second season with the 49ers. “All stadiums at that mark need a refresh. We’re getting ready to host two world class events with Super Bowl 60 and World Cup.”
Suite renovations, field-level seat expansion, wireless connectivity upgrades and new end zone videoboards, which 49ers officials tout as the NFL’s biggest 4K screens, are all part of the renovations. Some upgrades been completed for the coming football season and the remaining pieces, including the new videoboards, should be in place by the start of the 2025 season, Melendez Hughes said.
Supporting the new boards will be 13,000 square feet of upgraded LED screens, plus a new LED sport lighting system will be installed to brighten the field for night games.
The 49ers, in tandem with architect Populous and construction firm Devcon, which teamed with Turner Construction to originally build the stadium, have been planning the improvements over the past few years.
WJHW is the stadium’s audio-visual consultant.
The project covers renovations to 120 suites, half of which have been completed for this year with the remaining half to be completed next offseason, Melendez Hughes said. Levi’s Stadium has 174 total suites.
Twenty new event-level seats debut this year in the south end zone, increasing the total in that end to about 50 oversized red reclining chairs that sit on the field. The 49ers initially added field-level seats in the north end zone in 2021 before expanding the concept to both end zones a year later. At that time, the price was $1,5000 a seat, tied to an all-inclusive package covering the cost of food and drink.
The new seats come with a one-time Stadium Builders License fee of $17,500 on top of the ticket price, which the 49ers are still working on defining, Melendez Hughes said.
Scott Capstack, a senior design principal and design director at Populous, has worked on Levi’s Stadium over the past 15 years, dating to his tenure at HNTB, a competing sports architect. Across the NFL, fans can’t get enough of field-level inventory, he said, an ultra-premium product that’s a key piece of revenue for teams building new stadiums and renovating existing facilities.
“It’s all about access, trying to get the closest thing to courtside seats in the NBA into the football world, where you’re high-fiving players and touching the ball,” Capstack said. “Those experiences are hard to replicate and people want to be there. Nothing compares. It’s a completely different environment than sitting even 10 rows up or in the first row inside the bowl.”
In addition, the revamped Cisco Lounge Suite, a communal space in the north end, featuring a small bocce ball court, pool table and shuffleboard will open this year after the project was announced in 2023, team officials said.
Capstack said the recreational game elements fall in line with social clubs in general catering to the younger generation, in an effort to keep those fans engaged at halftime, as well as postgame.
“It’s similar to the Chicken N Pickles of the world,” he said, referring to the chain of chicken restaurants connected to pickleball courts across multiple locations in Kansas City, Missouri, where Populous is headquartered. “It’s not just about seeing the sport. We’ve been working with that company on others in Glendale, Arizona and St. Charles, Missouri.”
At Levi’s Stadium, Cisco, the Bay Area tech giant, is supplying its new Wi-Fi 6 infrastructure system, equipped with 1,300 access points for high-speed Internet across the 68,500-seat building.
In tandem, Verizon’s wireless network is going through an update, which along with a new distributed-antenna system with the assistance of America Fujikura, another telecommunications provider, will help power frictionless concession stands as the 49ers continue to roll out those retrofits.
For all NFL teams playing host to World Cup matches, fortifying stadium connectivity will be critical for accommodating those international crowds.
“We continue to have conversations with FIFA, until we open the doors for that event,” Melendez Hughes said. “There’s a lot of work to be done before July 2026.”
The suite renovations may appear to be a basic job, but for Capstack, whose work at Levi’s Stadium started in 2010, it’s been fun to track the design and evolution of those premium spaces.
“We’re using the foundation of the original suites, but taking it to a more elevated finish, a clean, polished look, in keeping with modern trends, especially in the Bay Area,” he said.
“Overall, we’re trying to push the limits of the club-type lounge for a suite area reserved for those patrons. It’s like the Owners Clubs; Levi’s Stadium was among the first in the NFL to have lounge space (apart from suite interiors) accessible to suite patrons. It’s not just a suite corridor. It’s all about capturing the dollars and interest of those fans, giving them an opportunity to stay longer and stay connected with other fans in those spaces.”
