Diversified Wins Best Large Venue Project for Xfinity Mobile Arena

Diversified has won the 2026 Integration Award for Best Large Venue Project for its work at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, Penn. The award recognizes integration work that supports large crowds, constant event turnover and the high expectations of fans, teams and venue operators.

Diversified’s win puts a major Philadelphia sports and entertainment venue in the spotlight. It also offers useful lessons for integrators who take on complex, high-traffic projects of any size.

Xfinity Mobile Arena: A Flagship Philadelphia Venue

Formerly known as the Wells Fargo Center, Xfinity Mobile Arena is home to the Philadelphia Flyers and Philadelphia 76ers. It also hosts concerts, family shows and other large-scale live events throughout the year.

How Diversified Transformed Xfinity Mobile Arena

Serving as both consultant and integrator, Diversified delivered a complete design-build solution that transformed the facility into a 1080p ST 2110 IP production environment while preserving critical operations throughout implementation.

Because shutting down the arena was not an option, Diversified divided the project into two carefully coordinated phases spanning two operating seasons.

Phase One focused on replacing the failing baseband routing switcher before it became a greater reliability risk. Here, Diversified installed a new ST 2110 core while maintaining compatibility with the facility’s extensive legacy infrastructure.

One of the most significant engineering challenges involved integrating the arena’s existing analog and AES audio systems with the new IP environment. Large portions of the facility couldn’t communicate directly with the ST 2110 infrastructure.

To address this, Diversified developed a migration strategy that converted the legacy analog and AES audio to MADI before bringing it into the ST 2110 fabric for management. This approach maintained existing production workflows while establishing the IP backbone required for the second phase.

By limiting the first phase to foundational infrastructure, Diversified also avoided purchasing the remaining equipment years in advance.

Additionally, hardware for the second phase was procured closer to installation, reducing compatibility risks associated with rapidly evolving broadcast technology and ensuring the client received current-generation equipment.

What Happened in Phase Two of the Project?

During Phase Two, Diversified removed the remaining aging production system and completed the installation of the new 1080p SMPTE ST 2110 environment, designed around flexibility, scalability and operational speed.

The arena’s original rack room presented another major challenge. It still contained equipment racks dating to the building’s original construction, and those racks lacked the depth, power and cooling capacity required for modern server-class broadcast equipment.

Rather than compromise the system design, Diversified identified another location within the building and engineered a secondary broadcast equipment room featuring modern server racks, three-phase 208V red-and-blue power distribution and dedicated environmental cooling.

The new room accommodated the current system while creating a more scalable foundation for future upgrades.

Because the rack room was completed before production control room renovation began, Diversified could stage, configure and validate much of the system in advance. This reduced risk during the final cutover and helped the team work within the arena’s limited construction windows.

Diversified also rebuilt the arena’s truck dock connectivity. Years of incremental additions had created a complex collection of legacy fiber connections, patch panels and spliced cabling supporting remote television production.

The integrator also redesigned the central distribution hub, creating an organized patching architecture connected to broadcast endpoints throughout the venue.

The improved infrastructure allows visiting production trucks to interface more quickly with cameras, microphones and venue resources while improving reliability, serviceability and scalability.

How did Diversified Deliver Control and Infrastructure for the Arena?

The defining achievement of the project was Diversified’s intelligent routing and control system. Xfinity Mobile Arena serves several primary stakeholders — the Philadelphia Flyers, Philadelphia 76ers, venue operations and visiting broadcasters including NBC, Amazon and Apple — each requiring different monitor layouts, routing paths, recording assignments, HDR or SDR workflows and operating preferences.

Previously, engineering staff manually reconfigured the control room between events, a process that could take an hour or more.

Diversified replaced that process with sophisticated routing logic and automated control macros. Operators can now recall a complete production environment with a single button press.

Selecting “Flyers” automatically configures the monitor walls, routing, recording assignments and production resources for hockey operations while selecting “76ers” recalls a separate configuration tailored to basketball.

Additional presets let engineers switch truck feeds between HDR and SDR workflows based on each broadcaster’s requirements.

Navigating the Busy Xfinity Mobile Arena

According to Diversified, delivering the project required extensive coordination. Construction took place while Xfinity Mobile Arena continued hosting events.

Diversified coordinated venue ownership, Comcast, professional sports organizations, union labor, construction trades and broadcast engineering teams while building the new rack room, rebuilding the control room and maintaining readiness for scheduled events.

Each phase had to be carefully sequenced around games, concerts and live productions.
The completed solution provides the client with a faster, more reliable and highly flexible production environment capable of accepting and managing virtually any feed from any visiting show or production truck.

Most importantly, the project demonstrates quality systems integration: not simply replacing aging technology, but designing an operational ecosystem that can adapt to every event, production partner and stakeholder depending on it.

Diversified Earns Positive Feedback

For Xfinity Mobile Arena, the measure of success was straightforward: engineering teams needed to spend less time managing the system and more time delivering great productions.
Staff can now recall a complete production environment for different professional sports teams or visiting broadcast partners using automated presets rather than lengthy manual routing changes.

Monitor walls, signal paths, recording destinations and production resources all adapt automatically to the needs of the event, reducing setup time while also improving operational consistency.

Beyond the control improvements, the client has gained a modernized SMPTE ST 2110 infrastructure, rebuilt truck dock connectivity, an upgraded monitor wall and stronger communications capabilities — together replacing a legacy system that had become a consistent reliability risk.

Internal media movement, monitoring and engineering operations are now substantially more efficient, allowing staff to focus on delivering quality productions.

Delivering a True Partnership

This outcome was shaped in large part by Diversified’s history with the venue.

Having supported the arena since its original construction more than 25 years ago, the Diversified team brought institutional knowledge that allowed it to anticipate requirements, design future-ready solutions and execute a complex, multi-year modernization while the building hosted approximately 300 events annually without interruption.

The relationship continues today — when technical challenges arise, the arena team’s first call is still Diversified.