20 Jun 2018

A whole new ballgame

Philip Mason examines the rapidly developing use-case for 5G deployed during large events, as well as how digital comms are currently revolutionising elite sport, both on the training ground and the playing field.

This summer will likely be remembered above all for the number of massive public events taking place both in the UK and abroad, not least the Royal Wedding in May and the World Cup a month later.

These kinds of occasions have always possessed immense power to bring people together, mobilising as they do incredibly influential discourses around national identity, loyalty and so on. This is even more the case nowadays with broadband-enabled technology giving people the opportunity to debate such events with half the world’s population.

The way in which content is consumed is also fundamentally different in 2018 from the way things were when Bobby Moore lifted the Jules Rimet trophy 50 years ago. This is not just down to an increasing number of media outlets covering these events, but also apps such as Periscope and Facebook Live enabling those in attendance to upload their own footage.

As impactful as this kind of sharing has already been on the producers of ‘official’ content, the expectation on the part of consumers to be able to send and receive increasingly enormous chunks of data is also now a major consideration for those operating event venues. The most high-profile example of such a site in the UK is Wembley, which its communications partner EE (as recently purchased by BT) has undertaken to make ‘the most connected stadium in the world’.