The last time the Seahawks hosted the NFC Championship Game in 2015, Seattle was a much different city and Lumen Field was a different stadium.

To be sure, to the untrained eye the Sodo gridiron doesn't look much different from the CenturyLink Field days. But 11 years brings change for both the fans' experience and their expectations. Among the crowd Sunday, thousands will be livestreaming from the stadium, posting on various social media feeds, and connecting with jealous family and friends watching from home.

One of Lumen Field's biggest challenges is making sure its bandwidth keeps up with demand on gameday, said Chip Suttles, the Seahawks' vice president of IT.

Suttles works with Lumen, a Louisiana telecommunications giant valued at more than $9 billion, more closely that one would expect between a team and the brand that owns the naming rights to the stadium. After all, it's not like his counterpart in Denver is working hand-in-glove with Empower Annuity Insurance Company of America, sponsor of the Broncos' stadium.

Lumen has technically been a part of the Seahawks stadium experience since 2011, when the company was known as CenturyLink. But as Lumen rebranded and shifted its focus to network infrastructures, the tech side of its partnership with the Seahawks evolved as well.

Suttles said when the stadium began offering Wi-Fi roughly 14 years ago, the average Seahawks game day would see 2 to 4 terabytes of data — 2 million to 4 million megabytes — pass through the network. On Saturday, when the Seahawks thumped the San Francisco 49ers, Suttles said more than 16 terabytes of traffic flowed through it. This Sunday could see even more traffic.

Taking that massive influx of data through their networks is an infrastructure challenge, made trickier by the stadium.

Lumen Field opened in 2002, a handful of years before the first smartphone. While maintenance and modernization are physical concerns for the stadium, the Seahawks' IT folks have to be up to date as well.

Connectivity at the stadium is about more than fans sharing their experience. They need a solid internet connection to pull up digital tickets and enter the stadium or to order a beer. In emergency situations, having redundant connections could be essential.

We have to reduce friction and latency," Suttles said.

More than half of the crowd at a given Seahawks game or event at Lumen Field connect to the stadium's public Wi-Fi network.

Lumen Field's design creates another challenge — there's hardly a roof.

Lumen Field's open-air concept may give the Seahawks a weather advantage — and gives fans a stunning glimpse of the Seattle skyline. But Suttles said the Seahawks and Lumen have had to get creative providing Wi-Fi. The most efficient way to cover a dense area is to project from above.

In the upper concourse of the stadium there are some ceiling mounts for Wi-Fi. But Suttles said they've installed over 750 antennas under seats throughout the stadium.

For Lumen, it's a partnership with a stadium the company's has had naming rights for years. And Lumen has a vested interest. Nobody at the telecom giant wants fans to walk away grumbling about technical issues in the ticket line.

"What you want is for it all to be seamless," said Ryan Asdourian, chief strategy officer for Lumen. "So whether it's 16 terabytes or less that's flowing through, the fans don't miss a beat."

The network upgrades to the stadium are also in part due to Lumen's evolution.

Once a traditional telecommunications company, Lumen has had to change its business to focus more on network infrastructure. Asdourian and Suttles both said the partnership between the Seahawks and Lumen blossomed as the company evolved.

"If the Seahawks weren't so fan-forward you wouldn't bring all this technology this fast," Asdourian said. "Both companies have been through this culture-first transformation to make it great for the fan experience.

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