Member Article

Spice Girls concert the first in Ireland to have full capacity live streaming

Croke Park stadium, Dublin, has become the first venue in Ireland to offer the entire capacity of the 82,300 seat stadium to simultaneously live stream with a new mobile coverage system. Over five terabytes of mobile traffic was carried on Friday 24th May at the Spice Girls’ first live performance since the London Olympics, meaning anyone not lucky enough to get a ticket could share moments through those in the stadium as they happened live.

Following a redevelopment programme starting in the 1990s, Croke Park is the third-largest stadium in Europe, and when arenas for professional sports are excluded is in fact the largest stadium catering for an amateur sport in the world. With the new system installed, Croke Park no longer suffers from mobile connectivity dropouts caused by network capacity and density limitations when huge numbers of people are in the stadium at once.

As a result, the five terabytes of mobile traffic, which is the equivalent of 2,360 hours of broadcast-quality video or 650,000 digital photos, could be shared worldwide concurrently. For 90 minutes in the middle of the Spice Girls gig, the upload volume of 78,000+ fans exceeded the download as people live streamed video and posted selfies across social media channels, which never would have been possible before.

Due to the increasing demand for always-on and one-touch connectivity mobile coverage has to be a priority for other stadia to keep fans happy and coming back. Venues of all sizes, commercial and recreational, need to take note; we’re at the dawn of the smart city, which can’t exist without the best connectivity standards across its entire infrastructure.

Mobile connectivity is a huge opportunity for business and property owners to increase revenues and the value of their assets, as well as reduce cost and provide customers and employees with better experiences. This is supported by research from companies such as Vodafone UK, which found home owners prioritise connectivity and believe it is more important than gas and water.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Seán Keating .