This week, NTT announced that it has installed Cisco Connected Stadium Wi-Fi at the Seibu Dome, home of the Saitama Seibu Lions in the Japanese Pacific (Baseball) League. The venue is ready to deliver a new fan experience at opening day on Friday, March 29 -one that is more connected than ever before.

The announcement comes on the heels of the launch of StadiumVision Mobile last month by the Cisco Sports & Entertainment Solutions Group. Coming out of a recent showcase of this technology at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the New York Times, ESPN.com, and more media outlets wrote pieces about how Cisco solutions are reshaping the fan experience today.

This latest technology will soon be in soccer, football, and venues such as Santiago Bernabeu (Real Madrid) and Sporting Park (Sporting Kansas City), and the exciting potential of delivering new experiences is why hundreds of key sports executives from more than 15 countries gathered last week for a webcast to hear about how Cisco solutions are transforming the sports realm.

These leaders recognize the new fan experience must be a connected one, capable of delivering new experiences and enabling fans to use their personal mobile devices to interact at all times -whether that is watching live video, ordering food, purchasing merchandise, or interacting with the thousands of fans in the venue or around the world through social media.

It is all about "Connecting the Unconnected" fans and in the future the Internet of Everything (IoE) -the convergence of people, processes, data, and things, which create a powerful opportunity for disruption and change.

The IoE will not just happen. It will require significant network and IT expertise, as well as sustained commitment. There will be some early players who will experiment, but given the critical role of networks in this transition, Cisco is positioned to be a leader in this effort to create unimaginable new experiences in sports, entertainment and beyond.

In the end it is the experience enabled by the "Internet of Everything" that fans want and will pay for right now. It is why more than 140 venues in 30 different countries have turned to us to connect fans at the largest sporting events around the world.