Cisco signs multiyear NBA deals with Nets owner BSE, Hawks and Cavaliers

Oct. 15, 2026 — Cisco is set to announce three multiyear sponsorship deals with NBA organizations on Thursday morning: Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, the Atlanta Hawks and State Farm Arena, and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The network giant negotiated all three in-house, according to Sports Business Journal’s Ethan Joyce, and none of them starts from scratch. Each one formalizes and widens a technology relationship that goes back more than a decade.

The Cavaliers have used Cisco since 2005, the Hawks since 2006, and Brooklyn since Barclays Center opened in 2012. Cisco also had an earlier sponsorship at Barclays that ran its course; this year the two sides restarted that conversation. Financial terms were not part of the report.

What each team gets

Partner	Title in the deal	What Cisco covers
Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment	Multiyear sponsor	One unified network across the Nets, the Liberty, the G League Nets, Barclays Center, HSS Training Center and Brooklyn Basketball Training Center
Cleveland Cavaliers	Official enterprise networking partner	Network and cybersecurity at Rocket Arena, extended to the Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center opening in February
Atlanta Hawks / State Farm Arena	“Proud Technology Partner”	Wi-Fi 7 upgrade for the arena plus equipment for its Production Command Center
Relationship began	Cavaliers 2005, Hawks 2006, Brooklyn 2012

For Brooklyn, the selling point is consolidation. Cisco will run one platform across a portfolio that now stretches from two pro teams in two leagues to a G League club, two training facilities and one of New York’s busiest arenas.

In Cleveland, Cisco keeps the network and cybersecurity backbone at Rocket Arena and moves into the team’s new Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center, which is due to open in February. Spreading the same system to the practice facility means the club does not have to build a second network from the ground up.

Atlanta’s piece is the most visible to fans. The Wi-Fi 7 upgrade at State Farm Arena started Tuesday and is scheduled to be done by the end of the year, said Kim Rometo, the Hawks and State Farm Arena’s executive vice president and chief technology and innovations officer. Cisco will also equip the building’s Production Command Center, a setup similar to the one it built at Capital One Arena under its wider deal with Monumental Sports & Entertainment in Washington.

Why the timing matters in Atlanta

Rometo spoke about two hours after State Farm Arena was named the site of the Atlanta Dream’s home games in the WNBA Finals against the Golden State Valkyries. Game 4 of that series falls on Oct. 24, the same day as the Hawks’ home opener, so the building will host two major events in one day while the upgrade is still in progress. She said the existing Cisco setup is what lets the arena take on sudden changes like that.

“I want the network that I know is completely scalable and flexible to say, ‘Oh, you want to do that and you want to do it here? No problem,'” Rometo said. She added that the team has already put more wireless access points outdoors, including along State Farm Drive, where it has staged World Cup events, because the property around the arena is now part of the fan experience and not just the seating bowl. The Dream will also play all of their home games at State Farm Arena starting next season, when the WNBA moves to a 50-game schedule.

The business case

Arena technology deals like these are a growing part of how NBA teams earn sponsorship money. Ownership groups now run several teams, practice facilities and year-round event venues, and each new revenue idea, from mobile ordering to betting features to outdoor fan zones, depends on a network that can handle a full house. Bryan Bedford, Cisco’s director of consumer industries and business solutions, said teams’ tech spending and expectations have only grown.

“More and more, teams and venues are recognizing that there is no AI era without a secure network at the core,” Bedford said. He said that over the last three to five years, teams have bought into putting everything on one combined network as they try to grow, and that this is why more teams and venues are signing with Cisco.

For the three clubs, the deals turn a long-standing vendor into a paying partner with its name on the building’s technology. For Cisco, it is a way to show off its systems in front of NBA and WNBA crowds in Brooklyn, Cleveland and Atlanta, with a WNBA Finals stage coming right away.