For the New York Yankees, every game day creates a high-stakes connectivity test: thousands of fans sharing content at once, critical systems moving data in real time and no room for disruption. With Lumen Network-as-a-Service, the organization can scale bandwidth on demand, strengthen resiliency across sites and align network spending with real-world demand.

With Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, a private data center in Tampa and demand that can surge without warning, the Yankees need a network built for flexibility at scale. By partnering with Lumen, the team has created an on-demand connectivity foundation that supports game-day peaks, connects mission-critical operations and helps protect the experience fans and staff depend on.

On the world stage, precision matters

The Yankees operate at a scale few sports organizations ever reach. From sold-out stadium events to year-round operations across multiple sites, the brand depends on infrastructure that performs reliably under constant visibility and variable demand. “We have the most championships of any team in American sports history, and fans follow us from every corner of the globe. Everything we do is on the world stage—so it has to be perfect,” said Mike Lane, Senior Vice President of Technology & Broadcasting and CIO at the New York Yankees.

Before shifting to a more flexible model, the Yankees faced a familiar trade-off: pay year-round for peak capacity or risk performance gaps when demand spikes. Lumen helped eliminate that compromise with a model built to flex with the business. “It’s an enterprise network. It spans not just Yankee Stadium, but our other campuses as well—including three sites in Tampa. It’s all interconnected,” said Scott Swist, Senior Director of IT at the New York Yankees.

Elastic infrastructure for dynamic demand

Lumen® Network-as-a-Service, including Lumen® Internet On-Demand and Lumen® Ethernet Fabric Connect, gives the Yankees the ability to scale bandwidth up or down based on real event needs. That enables faster provisioning, more efficient spending, and a network strategy that adapts to opening day, postseason play and everything in between.

That flexibility changes both planning and investment. Instead of building and maintaining its own long-haul network infrastructure, the Yankees can use Lumen as the backbone across sites and focus resources on other strategic priorities. “Lumen basically becomes our backbone. We don’t have to build fiber all over the United States to get from site to site—Lumen does that for us, and we simply tap into the existing Lumen infrastructure,” said Erron Pettry, the team’s Senior Manager of Data Center Facilities Operations.

Because the model is consumption-based, the Yankees can better match network capacity to actual demand instead of carrying a year-round peak cost structure. “With Network-as-a-Service, we’re on a consumption-based model that allows us to only pay for what we use, which allows us to prioritize other projects,” Swist added.

Where continuity is non-negotiable

Resiliency is engineered into the design. The Yankees use diverse network paths between key locations so operations can continue even if a major connection point goes down, helping protect critical applications and data flows when availability matters most. “The Yankees cannot go offline, and having Lumen’s infrastructure safeguards our operations. We can lose an entire central office and can still maintain connectivity to the Tampa data center” said Pettry. Because the architecture runs on Lumen’s backbone, the model can also extend easily as new locations, services and business needs emerge.

Invisible infrastructure, visible advantage

While the Yankees are known for their history and their global brand, the ability to deliver at scale depends on infrastructure built for precision—a private data center engineered to withstand 200 mph sustained winds, redundant circuits and a resilient network that they trust behind the scenes.

“If my team is doing their job and the network’s doing its job and everything’s working, nobody notices anything. The goal of my team is to be invisible,” said Swist. That invisibility is exactly the point. When the network recedes into the background, the organization can stay focused on what happens on the field—and on the fans in the seats.

Fan experience at the core

For the Yankees, network performance directly shapes the fan experience. Fans may not think about bandwidth, but they feel it the instant a video won’t upload—and on a game day, tens of thousands of them are sharing the moment at once.

“When Aaron Judge hits a home run, thousands of fans instantly capture it, text it, and share it. That creates a significant surge in bandwidth, and we trust Lumen to help keep that connectivity moving out of the stadium—which is why this partnership is so important,” Pettry added.

That capability helps the Yankees support a more seamless fan experience on game day, giving thousands of people the connectivity they expect in the moments they want to share most.

Future-ready infrastructure for what’s next

As media demands, fan engagement and AI-driven workloads continue to evolve, the Yankees need a connectivity foundation that can evolve with them. With Lumen, they have a network strategy built to scale with demand, support critical operations and adapt as new needs emerge. As Mike Lane put it, “As a world-class organization, we value partnering with companies that share that same standard, which is why we trust Lumen to help provide the building blocks for our future.”

Together, Lumen’s Network-as-a-Service, Internet On-Demand, and Ethernet Fabric Connect give the Yankees a connectivity strategy built for the realities of live sports—one that scales with demand, performs under pressure and flexes for future growth. Because when everything has to be perfect, the network can’t be an afterthought. It has to be part of the strategy.

Discover how Lumen can power your most ambitious initiatives with secure, scalable, and flexible network solutions.

To learn more about New York Yankee’s transformation, read the full customer success story.

Visit our customer story library to learn how organizations in virtually every industry are achieving their business objectives.

_{Current Lumen customer compensated for their endorsement}

_{This content is provided for informational purposes only and may require additional research and substantiation by the end user. In addition, the information is provided "as is" without any warranty or condition of any kind, either express or implied. Use of this information is at the end user's own risk. Lumen does not warrant that the information will meet the end user's requirements or that the implementation or usage of this information will result in the desired outcome of the end user. All third-party company and product or service names referenced in this article are for identification purposes only and do not imply endorsement or affiliation with Lumen. This document represents Lumen products and offerings as of the date of issue. Services not available everywhere. Lumen may change or cancel products and services or substitute similar products and services at its sole discretion without notice. ©2026 Lumen Technologies. All Rights Reserved.}