Connected Industries

Sports and Entertainment

As the world grows ever more dependent on mobile wireless technology, owners of sports stadiums, entertainment venues and production companies require the latest cutting-edge technology to deliver applications that surprise and delight fans and guests. Find out more at MWC Barcelona 2025.
Knowledge Partner Accenture Logo
Supporting Sponsor Masting logo

Better connected

Technology is continuing to infuse every aspect of sports and entertainment, creating more immersive experiences for fans at live events and at home. Globally, large venues are seeing a 67% growth in data usage year over year, presenting a huge market opportunity for the mobile ecosystem with significant innovation. Find out more about showcasing your brand, innovations, or expertise within this sector.

"In the arena where sports and entertainment converge, innovation is the ultimate game-changer. The future belongs to those who dare to reimagine the fan experience. Join us at the Sports and Entertainment Summit to explore the possibilities."

- Faisal Zia, Technical Director, GSMA Foundry

Sports and Entertainment in numbers

  • 90%

    The amount 5G connectivity could enable live event broadcasters to cut production costs by¹

  • 67%

    The annual growth in data usage in sports venues globally²

  • 320.7Mbps

    Verizon’s 5G network average download speeds inside NFL Stadiums³

¹ https://www.gsma.com/5GHub/broadcast
² https://www.ericsson.com/en/small-cells/stadium
³ https://www.gsma.com/5ghub/stadiums

Meet the biggest players in Sports and Entertainment

Ready to have your ‘drop the mic’ moment in the spotlight? In 2024, we saw our largest attendee audience from non-telco industries, with adjacent verticals making up 59% of the audience - MWC continues to be the place where the ecosystem's most influential organisations come to get business done.

“I believe that there is a very clear and direct symbiotic relationship between a thriving creative industry and a thriving tech and internet ecosystem.”

- Greg Peters, co-CEO, Netflix


 

“We go to remote locations. We needed to broadcast this in a different way. So we decided to bring in a... virtual reality element of it. And the way it's done is actually we have 40 people on the ground. We have another 40 people on a studio in London. We have photo graphics. We have 25 people in a studio in Amsterdam, and 10 people in a studio in Barcelona - all at the same time working virtually together to produce the feed that then goes out to the world.

So you see what you see on TV is completely different than what we see when we're watching the cars on site. And it's something that is much more data intensive.”

- Alejandro Agag, Founder & CEO, Formula E