Having reliable service is important during big-scale events. Stadiums can fit several thousand people —the biggest stadiums in the United States are able to fit over 100,000 people, and your average NFL stadium can seat over 50,000. That’s a lot of people in the same reduced space, and chances are the vast majority of them have smartphones and a data plan, and are probably constantly posting stuff about the event.
Have you ever wondered how much data users attending these events actually consume? The Super Bowl, arguably the biggest sporting event in the United States, just wrapped up, and Verizon just gave us some food for thought.
Verizon has announced that Verizon users in and around Allegiant Stadium in Vegas during Super Bowl consumed about 52.34 TB of data during the event. The biggest spikes in data usage occurred around kick-off and during Usher’s half-time show, so it was likely mostly spent in messages or social media posts.
For reference, 52TB of data is enough to stream 1080p Netflix non-stop for roughly 2 years straight.
In addition to this, Verizon says that 70% of these users used the company’s 5G UW network, and that this usage represents a 9.4% increase from the 47.8 TB used during Super Bowl LVII last year.
Mind you, this figure represents only Verizon users who attended the event. The company says that 50.5% of the 61,629 people attending the event use Verizon, so this 52 TB figure is good for about ~31,000 people in and around the stadium.
It also makes us wonder how much the 49.5% of people using other carriers might have used data-wise — we unfortunately couldn’t come across any figures by other carriers, but if it’s the same, the figure might go up to about 100 TB or so, or an average of 1.6 GB per user. Sounds about right if you’re posting videos and social media posts throughout the event.
Overall it’s an impressive amount of data for such a small space of time. Millimeter-wave 5G (called 5G Ultra Wideband in Verizon’s case) is also ideal for these scenarios: wide open spaces with direct line of sight to each customer.
