How the MetLife Stadium seat and sun data is measured

Every number comes from a USGS lidar survey of the stadium, NOAA solar equations, the MetLife Stadium section numbering and published row lists. Nothing is estimated from photos.

Sources

Stadium shape: USGS 3D Elevation Program lidar, New Jersey North East 6 County collection, flown 27 March 2025, 2 tiles. First-return points gridded to 1 m, noise removed.
Section directions: the section order round the stadium from a ticket map, lined up with the field in the lidar and checked against the compass on the metlifestadium.com fan map.
Row lists, the home and visitor sides and some covered rows: rateyourseats.com section notes; wheelchair rows are left out.
Clubs, gates, bag rules, water, beer, re-entry, parking and transit: metlifestadium.com and giants.com. Schedules: giants.com and newyorkjets.com. World Cup corners: EwingCole and ESPN. Capacity and opening year: Wikipedia.
Sun: NOAA solar position equations. Weather: ERA5 reanalysis and forecasts via Open-Meteo.

How shade is computed

Each section is sampled on 3 lines (left, centre, right) at every row, 10185 seat points in total. For each point the surrounding stadium surface is scanned in every direction the sun can come from to give a horizon profile. A seat is in direct sun when the sun is higher than that horizon. Games are sampled every 10 minutes for 3.5 hours. The Week 18 game is modelled at each NFL window until the NFL sets its kickoff.

How rows are placed

A line is walked out from the field edge through each section and takes the first rake in that tier's height band: the lower bowl from the field wall, the 200 level from about 16 m up and the 300 level from about 33 m up. Rows spread over the visible rake. Where the tier above or the roof ring hides the back rows, those rows take the depth measured on the open rows (0.76 m in the lower bowl, 0.87 m in the 200 level, 0.63 m in the 300 level) and count as covered.

How the seat views are made

Each view is drawn from a 3D model built from the lidar, from 1.15 m above the seat (seated eye height), facing the field. Only rows open to the sky get a view.

Limits

The lidar was flown in March 2025, before the World Cup work on the four lower-bowl corners. For NFL games the corner seats go back to their original places (EwingCole), so the scan shows the NFL layout.
The ticket map is not drawn to scale, so section directions come from it but section edges can be off by a few seats.
The roof ring over the back of the 300 level is partly see-through to the laser; where rateyourseats.com lists covered rows lower than the lidar shows, we use its row.
Not modelled: the suites, the field-level club seats and the club lounges.
Light poles and video boards thinner than the 1 m grid may be missed.

Downloads (CC BY 4.0)

sun-by-section.csv: game, kickoff, section, minutes of sun, shade arrival
sections.json: section geometry and row-by-row sightlines