Pro Football Hall of Fame Scores a More Modern, Immersive Guest Experience with Extreme Networks

The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio is so much more than a museum. It’s an immersive look into the history and spirit that, for many fans, represents the grit, perseverance, and cultural impact of the game of football. That’s why hundreds of thousands of fans, players, and media visit the Hall each year, especially during the iconic Enshrinement Week.

Behind the scenes in these hallowed halls, technology plays a critical role in delivering a seamless visitor experience and managing operations. But 15 years ago, the Hall’s IT environment was a very different story.

“Before [Extreme Networks], it was a flat, unmanaged network; no Wi-Fi, no anything that you would expect in a modern network,” recalled Chad Reese, Senior Director of Information Technology at the Hall of Fame.

That began to change when the Hall of Fame partnered with Extreme Networks. What started as a network overhaul has since grown into a long-term relationship built on trust, innovation, and reliability.

For decades, the Hall’s unmanaged network made it difficult to support growing demands and museum expansion. From basic staff operations to media coverage of Enshrinement Week, IT teams struggled to keep up. Reese and his team were facing several challenges that required ingenuity and problem-solving:

• Demands on the network: Events like Enshrinement Week and the associated influx of media and others connecting to the network created major network performance issues.
• Operational Efficiency: Small IT teams struggle to keep up with troubleshooting and triaging incidents and outages.
• Security Concerns: The need for flexibility was matched by stringent security requirements. With point-of-sale systems and retail operations, PCI compliance was non-negotiable.

“With PCI in play, you have to layer on extensive security and strict requirements for handling and processing credit card data,” Arnold said. Regular penetration testing highlighted the importance of strong segmentation and rigorous access controls.

And with only a small IT team, operational efficiency mattered.

“We have big events, but we’re a very small organization,” said Pat Lindesmith, Executive Vice President of Sponsorships and Partnerships at the Hall of Fame. “When we first started our partnership with Extreme, we had a team of 50 employees, and I think we had an IT team of one person.” And for that one person, provisioning VLANs, troubleshooting device connections, and managing access consumed time that could have been spent on higher-value work.

Extreme Networks first deployed a modern, managed infrastructure at the Hall of Fame 15 years ago. Since then, the Hall has undergone three complete wired and wireless network upgrades — each one improving performance, simplicity, and security. For employees, this high-performance network translates to an ability to get more work done faster and more efficiently, while guests enjoy more immersive connected experiences.

The X’s and O’s deployed by The Hall include:

• ExtremeCloud™ IQ: Cloud-based network management, which gives the Hall of Fame full visibility and control. IT can now quickly spin up temporary networks for media or sponsors and monitor performance in real time.
• Fabric technology: Automated provisioning and segmentation eliminates manual VLAN management. “With Fabric Attached, the time I spend managing VLAN ports and making network configuration changes has probably gone down 40%,” said Arnold.
• Reliability: “In the 15 years that we’ve had Extreme, we’ve never had more than a minute of downtime other than applying a firmware update here or there,” Reese said. “It’s unheard of, but it just works.”
• Network-Infrastructure-as-a-Service (NIaaS): The Hall of Fame runs on Extreme’s NIaaS model, which provides predictable costs, scalability, and guaranteed upgrades every five years. “For us, it’s a smarter, more flexible way to run our network instead of dropping a ton of money up front on hardware and then being stuck with it for years,” Reese explained.
• Customer-first support: Each year, an Extreme engineer returns to Canton to assist with upgrades — the same engineer who installed the first system 15 years ago.

It’s a white-glove kind of experience that reflects the same values the Hall of Fame pours into accomodating a truly unique and immersive guest experience.

“What really stands out with Extreme for us is the people,” Reese emphasized. “We can reach out to them six years later and it’s like you’re talking to an old friend.” Paralleling that easy customer relationship, Arnold says, is the built-in ease of management that makes day-to-day life running the network a much simpler and more effective effort.

“It’s really easy to hop in [ExtremeCloud™ IQ] and turn up the SSIDs or push them out to the specific APs or whatever we need to,” said Rory Arnold, Senior Manager of Cybersecurity & Infrastructure at the Hall of Fame.

With Extreme, the Hall of Fame has transformed its IT operations and guest experience.

• Efficiency: Fabric technology reduced manual tasks by ~40%, freeing IT staff from repetitive VLAN work.
• Performance: Leveraging Extreme's WiFi 7 and testing 6 GHz frequencies has delivered near-gigabit speeds. “With that 6 gigahertz connection… we’re getting speeds almost like a physical cable — up in the 600–700 mb range,” said Arnold. Wi-Fi 7 provides faster connectivity and elevates the visitor experience with higher capacity Wi-Fi to power immersive, touch screen exhibits and videos, mobile ticketing, and AR displays, among other consumer-facing applications.
• Security: PCI networks remain tightly segmented, with excellent third-party pen test results year after year.
• Reliability: Zero major outages in 15 years, even during peak traffic events.
• Guest experience: Visitors, staff, vendors, and media enjoy seamless, secure connectivity across the museum. Even registers can fail over to Wi-Fi without issue.

The IT team now has confidence in scaling for special events like Enshrinement Week. “It’s really easy to hop in Cloud IQ and turn up the SSIDs or push them out to the specific APs or whatever we need to,” Arnold noted. And now the Hall is preparing for its next chapter: a major modernization project and a new event center that will become one of the largest in Northeast Ohio. All of it will run on Extreme.

“We’re figuring out port counts and exactly what’s needed over there,” said Reese. “It will be all Extreme equipment.” Thanks to the Extreme NIaaS model that has been such a core part of the Hall of Fame upgrades, planning woes and budgeting worries for future upgrades are a thing of the past.

Today, Extreme is the Hall of Fame's go-to choice for providing networking technology and Wi-Fi for the museum itself as well as smooth execution when the Hall is staging events at the adjacent Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium. From preseason opening games to high-level events during the Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Festival, the stadium must be ready to handle an enormous influx of activity and network demands.

“I will say that we couldn’t do it without Extreme,” said the Hall of Fame's Lindesmith. “We’ve leaned on Extreme a lot to help us provide the fan experience that is necessary for an NFL game and to meet an NFL audience’s standards. Wi-Fi is critical to that, and it’s critical to everything we do in the museum.”

Preserving history goes hand in hand with modernizing the guest experience across the range of facilities and digital offerings within the Hall of Fame. With Extreme Networks, the Hall has built a network that is reliable, secure, and easy to manage — one that scales to meet the demands of events, supports PCI compliance, and keeps IT focused on strategic growth rather than troubleshooting.

“In 15 years, we’ve never had a major problem,” Reese summed up. “Extreme doesn’t just roll out networking gear and walk away. They take the time to understand our challenges and tailor the technology to solve them. For us, that’s the difference.”