Down on the field at Levi’s Stadium, the Packers and 49ers are doing battle. It’s a sticky October Sunday and too early in the season for Niners fans to have given up, so the crowd of 70,799 is buzzing. But John Paul (everybody calls him JP) isn’t watching the game. Instead, VenueNext’s gray-haired and affable founder-CEO is standing in front of an array of televisions on a wall in a conference room high above the field, staring intently.
All over the stadium, thousands of people are using an app his team built. They’re using it to scan their tickets into the game, using funky kiosks VenueNext also built. They’re using it to find their way through the stadium to their seats. They’re ordering hot dogs and foam fingers, and having them delivered to their laps. They’re watching replays. They’re ordering another beer, barkeep. And Paul is watching it all happen live. Well, not literally. He’s not looking at the cameras stationed all over the building. He’s watching the charts and graphs.
