The summer of 2024 may be remembered as the Summer of Stadiums, as mega-arenas draw crowds for some of the world’s biggest events, from high-stakes international tournaments like the 2024 CONMBEBOL Copa America, which culminates on Sunday, to Taylor Swift’s blockbuster “Hellas” tour, which continues to upend economies across Europe.
If you love big crowds, spectacular shows, and eye-poppingly expensive snacks, you’re living in the golden age.
Keeping these venues running in the digital age is as big a challenge as putting on these shows. One of the biggest is how to cater for the massive data demands these audiences generate. During Swift’s three shows at Wembley Stadium in June, 90,000 music fans packed into the west London venue each night to buy limited-edition merchandise, swap friendship bracelets, and sing along. As British mobile network EE noted, audiences were avidly documenting their experience on social media.
According to EE, on Saturday night alone, fans consumed 5.57 terabytes of data, the equivalent of sharing 1.7 million images or streaming Swift’s extensive back catalogue 4,500 times over, a feat that would take even the most dedicated Swift fan 10 years to accomplish.
Many venues are now struggling to accommodate such capacities (the sight of blank space while scrolling through your Instagram feed is dreadful!) One of England’s top football teams, Everton, is building a new home stadium on Liverpool’s waterfront and, in an interview with Tech Informed, the club’s technical director, Phil Davis, spoke about making the new 52,000-seat venue a “future-proof fortress”.
“Fans want to be able to socially interact with the game,” he said. “While you might have a more traditional fan who doesn’t use their phone during the game, younger fans expect the ability to socialize and connect while in the venue.” Connectivity is an essential part of the stadium experience, he added, “it’s no longer a nice-to-have.”
Older arenas that have been refitted for the digital age often place antennas above the stadium’s ceiling fans, but Everton has installed one for every 75 seats in the stadium, as well as access points under the seats and some above to ensure a more reliable connection.
In Spain, Barcelona Football Club recently signed a four-year deal with Hewlett Packard Enterprise to incorporate advanced network and cloud capabilities, including a private 5G network and virtual reality and gamification applications for fans, into the renovation of its famous Camp Nou stadium and the nearby Espai Barça complex.
Technology and live sporting events have long gone hand in hand, from the introduction of instant replay at the 1963 Army-Navy football game to the development of computer vision tracking software in the 1990s. Last year’s MLB All-Star Game gave fans a novel perspective on the action thanks to the use of drone cameras inside the stadium, believed to be the first time the concept has been used at a game of this magnitude.
Football has been transformed in recent years by the introduction of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR), which creates tense moments as on-pitch officials wait for thorough video reviews before awarding a controversial goal or ruling an offside. And while those decisions are not foolproof, a review of Premier League data shows that before VAR was introduced, 82% of referees’ decisions were correct, while after VAR was introduced, that figure rose to 96%.
VAR uses dedicated tracking cameras pointed at the ball and each player, tracking them 50 times per second, and processes the data in real time with artificial intelligence to enable human referees to make faster and more accurate decisions.
According to FIFA, one new twist at the Qatar 2022 World Cup will be sensors fitted inside the soccer ball, transmitting data 500 times per second to a video operations room to detect the kick point with extreme precision. This will trigger automatic offside alerts, and after the referee’s decision on the pitch, the data will be used to generate 3D animations showing the positions of players’ hands and feet, which will be broadcast to the stadium and TV audience.
“AI can make these decisions quickly, so referees know if a player is offside and if it’s a goal or not,” sports physicist John Eric Gough told Nature magazine last month. “With previous technology, it took a computer about 70 seconds on average to make an offside call. It’s now predicted to take less than 30 seconds, so referees will be able to make these calls much quicker. … Human decisions like fouls and yellow and red cards still need to be made.” At least for now.
