- Ericsson says World Cup 2026 will test mobile networks across 16 host cities
- Traffic patterns will be more spread out than your typical football game
- Operators are layering macro gear, small cells and temporary assets to boost 5G capacity and coverage
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour taught Ericsson engineers a thing or two about how to prepare for this summer’s FIFA World Cup 2026.
For example, Swifties generated far more uplink traffic during her concerts than Ericsson initially expected – upstream traffic ran 3 to 4 times higher than a typical sporting event.
“We jokingly said that you need a tailored switch” to change between the downstream traffic at sporting events to the much higher upstream traffic happening at her concerts, said Peter Linder, head of thought leadership for Ericsson Americas. “We needed to turn it in the other direction.”
Linder has been tracking behavior at major sporting and other events for Ericsson for years, including the Super Bowl, IndyCar, Formula One and the Paris Olympics.
Early in the Taylor Swift Eras Tour, reports started to spread of the direction the network traffic was going and they hustled to prepare future venues so people wouldn’t run into the same capacity problem as at the earlier concerts.
“There was more sharing taking place,” and it was a different kind of sharing. “It’s not as exciting to share stills from a Taylor Swift concert as it is to share the audio and the video,” he said.
While Ericsson expects uplink capacity to be in high demand during the World Cup tournament, the way in which fans use the mobile networks will be different than an Eras concert.
“I think the concert people more or less use the back side of the phone, where the camera is, when they’re at the event,” Linder said. “Sports people, depending on who you are, if you’re geeky and would like to have access to all the statistics on a player, you’re more likely to use the front side of the phone.”
Ericsson RAN in host cities
Unlike a typical football game, traffic for the World Cup is going to be spread out over more places and over the course of days rather than hours. There are 11 host cities in the U.S., three in Mexico and two in Canada.
Ericsson’s RAN equipment is deployed across more than three-quarters of the host cities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
“When you get to these kinds of events, it's very much about reinforcing the network, both in the city and at the venues, because there's so much stuff going on as people are trying to navigate,” he said. “You're rarely at the hotel during these kinds of events. You're out and about and roaming around with your friends, navigating to wherever you're going.”
That means operators and their vendors will rely on a mix of upgrades in the host cities: macro enhancements, small cells, millimeter wave and C-band spectrum, private 5G networks and temporary assets staged outside stadiums. Preparations for events like the World Cup tend to start about a year in advance, Linder said.
Speed up the payment process please
Linder is an auto race fan, so many of his examples come from that space. When he attended a race last year, he clocked every single payment he and his group made for food and drinks, and it varied between 2 and 30 seconds.
“The payments can’t be underestimated,” he said. “Really, you want to make sure the payment runs smoothly, so you can hand out $18 beers in two seconds rather than 30 seconds. It’s those kinds of things that the business operations teams are looking at – getting people in concession stands, merchandise sales, security screening, ticket screening and stuff like that.”
Media production is another area that’s becoming more connected, with smartphones and wireless-connected cameras increasingly being used for live productions. NBC Sports, for example, used eight iPhone 17 Pros and T-Mobile’s 5G standalone (SA) network to capture and broadcast video during the Kentucky Derby earlier this month.
Operators get ready for traffic surges
In Canada, Rogers shared the dollar amount that went into its FIFA preparations: $22 million in Toronto and $5 million in Vancouver and surrounding areas, for a total of $27 million. Crews spent almost 7,000 hours planning and installing new network infrastructure ahead of the World Cup.
According to Verizon, spectators are expected to use more than 50 terabytes of data within a stadium for each match, which is the approximate equivalent of streaming HD video for more than three years. Verizon is the official telecommunications services sponsor for the FIFA World Cup 2026.
AT&T equipped the 11 U.S. host cities with more than 2,000 different network upgrades and enhancements, including upgrades that go beyond stadiums to include airports, team camps and fan festivals. AT&T’s network capacity has been engineered for 2-3x more traffic than usual.
T-Mobile has been getting ready for the World Cup through a combination of 5G network enhancements, additional capacity deployments, AI-powered network optimization and real-time monitoring around stadiums, fan zones, airports and other high-traffic areas, a spokesperson told Fierce. The company declined to disclose a specific dollar amount associated with its World Cup-related network investments.
Circling back to Ericsson’s Linder, Fierce asked who he’ll be cheering for. Ericsson is based in Sweden, which qualified for the World Cup. Linder’s wife is American and his daughter lives in Mexico, so … “I guess I need to buy three shirts,” he quipped.
This story has been updated with additional information from T-Mobile.