When people think about WiFi access, they often think about connecting their phones or laptops to networks at home, work, or somewhere like a coffee shop. However, an often overlooked situation is the logistics of curating WiFi systems for live events with a high volume of attendees, such as concerts and music festivals.
For concerts and other live events, WiFi access is crucial for both performers and audiences alike. Venues have adapted their approach and now install WiFi systems and smart technologies that can handle the large numbers of users and network traffic expected during a major event.
Read on to discover the many ways in which WiFi is being used at concerts, both indoors and outdoors, and to learn about some of the considerations venues need to make when curating their own WiFi infrastructures and smart technology systems.
Why Do Venues Need WiFi Services?
A venue’s primary source of income comes from booking successful events. In order to establish a loyal and returning customer base, venues must offer quality services that meet the needs of the promoters, performers, and attendees.
After all, happy customers are repeat customers. One of the best ways to keep your customers happy is to provide them with strong and stable WiFi access. Here are four reasons why your venue needs reliable WiFi services.
WiFi Is a Necessity for All Live Events
Most people nowadays love to share their life experiences on multiple social media outlets. Sharing photos and videos has become one of the strongest motivations for people to attend live events. Part of the draw of an artist or a concert includes the social capital attendees will gain from participating in the live event.
Music Fans are Willing to Pay for Live Coverage
Nowadays, people are willing to pay for live streams of events – from music performances, to Twitch gaming streams. As a tool to promote a larger audience, live streaming can provide a wonderful gateway for fans to participate, even when they are physically unable to attend – as the whole world learned during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Live Sports Events Require Massive Data Use
The average American consumes 3.64GB of data per day. Users within stadiums consume similar amounts of data — however, when you go to a live sporting event, the number of users increases exponentially. Stadium Tech Report found that on average, each user at Super Bowl LIV in Miami consumed 595.6 megabytes of data over the course of the game — adding up to 26.42 terabytes of total data consumed.
As you can see, having a reliable and stable WiFi connection is now a requirement for all types of live events. Performers and live coverage event promoters expect it, and attendees demand it.
WiFi Services Allow More Monetization Opportunities
A common practice among many businesses is to offer customers the ability to log in to their WiFi networks in exchange for some personal information, or to watch an advertisement clip. The revenue opportunities that venues can take in during an event attendees’ WiFi login process is a major factor to consider.
Opportunity to Collect Customer Data
When customers log in to your venue WiFi, you can collect useful contact information like their name and email address. The data is extremely valuable, as it allows you to quickly create a database of potential customers you can reach out and market to for future events, provided you seek customers’ consent before doing so.
The login process is a perfect opportunity to engage with your attendees and gain insight into their profiles and interests. Through the consumer login process, and consistent with your privacy policy, which you should make available to customers, you can gather information such as the types of devices used to connect to WiFi and leverage the interests of individuals to target advertising for upcoming events. This process is also helpful in creating and supporting and anticipating guests’ needs.
With this data, you can offer more personalized content and experiences to enhance the entire live event experience.
Offer Partnerships With Event Promoters
Events and artists make a big chunk of their revenue from selling merchandise. The WiFi login portal page for your event is an excellent platform from which to advertise and sell merchandise.
There’s partnership potential where a venue might help the artist or event planner to market and sell their merchandise through its WiFi login page — a great way to generate additional revenue for the venue while also providing value to the event promoter.
Cross-Selling and Upselling Events
Another way to monetize your venue WiFi is cross-selling and upselling current and future events. Today, most event sales and purchases are accessible online — so if someone is attending a concert at your venue, you can use the opportunity to upsell them on VIP tickets or exclusive online merchandise. Or, if they’re attending a conference, you can cross-sell them on future events that might interest them.
Increased Marketing Partnership
By offering WiFi services, you are opening up your venue to increase marketing partnership opportunities. Businesses always look for new and innovative ways to reach their target audiences. You can provide businesses with the ability to brand their login page, advertise their products and services, and even offer coupons and discounts.
WiFi Services Can Help Venues Run Efficiently
Every business owner knows that controlling costs is one of the keys to running a successful operation. There are many different ways to save money by pairing various smart technology functions with your venue’s WiFi system.
IoT Enablement Smart Technology Tracking Features
When a customer connects to a venue’s WiFi network, the venue can track that customer’s movements and behavior. This information can help venue managers understand what areas of the venue are used the most, what times of day are busiest, and even how long customers spend in each area.
Using Tracking Features to Improve Customer Experience
The information gathered from tracking a customer’s location can be used to adjust and improve the overall customer experience. For example, if a venue sees a high amount of foot traffic in one area compared to another, they may decide to move some of their furniture or displays around to encourage more traffic in the less popular area.
On the other hand, if they see that customers are only spending a few minutes in one area but much longer in another, the venue may decide to add more seating or make other changes to encourage customers to spend more time in that location.
Helping Venues Save Money
WiFi services can also help venues save money by reducing energy costs. Many newer routers and access points come with energy-saving features that can make a big difference to your bottom line.
For example, some devices will automatically power down when they’re not in use or go into standby mode when there’s no activity. These features could lead to savings on your electric bill each month.
How Can Venues Provide Sufficient WiFi Coverage?
One of the most common complaints from event attendees is that they can’t get a good WiFi signal. It is crucial for venues to consider how they can ensure strong, reliable WiFi that can handle many users at once. There are many factors that are essential for a venue to be able to provide good WiFi coverage.
High Bandwidth
One of the most important factors for good WiFi coverage is high bandwidth. Higher bandwidth means more data can be transferred per second, which is essential for many users who may be streaming video or working on tasks requiring a lot of data transfer.
Multiple Skillfully Placed Access Points
Another vital factor is multiple skillfully placed access points. Having multiple access points ensures that there are no dead spots in the coverage area and that all users can connect to the network regardless of where they are in the venue. This feature is crucial for outdoor concert WiFi installation in particular, due to the fact that it can be challenging to place access points in optimal locations while ensuring they remain protected from the elements.
Appropriate Channel Width
For multiple access points to work well together at a venue, they must be configured with appropriate channel widths. Channel width refers to the amount of spectrum available by the Access Point. A wider channel width means more data can be transferred, and the network can support more users. Wide channels are crucial to allow for the transfer of large amounts of data and the high numbers of users at event venues.
Captive Portals
Finally, captive portals are essential for ensuring only event-goers have access to your network. Captive portals are landing pages that are displayed to users when they try to connect to a network. They typically require users to log in or register before they can gain access to the internet. This system prevents outsiders from hijacking your bandwidth and ensures your WiFi connection is dedicated to only your event attendees, performers, and employees.
Partner With Hospitality Network to Update Your WiFi System
A strong WiFi system is no longer a luxury for businesses — it’s a necessity. In areas like stadiums, arenas, and other concert halls or venues, people constantly use their devices for everything from work to streaming entertainment, sharing their experiences, and connecting with others. If your venue doesn’t have a reliable WiFi system to accommodate those needs, you risk losing out on potential customers.
With over 40 years of experience, Hospitality Network has been a leader in providing high-speed WiFi solutions for businesses in the hospitality industry, including concert venues, stadiums, and arenas. We partner with venues of all sizes to ensure their customers and clients have the best on-site experience possible.
What sets Hospitality Network apart from other providers is our focus on customizability. We understand that every business is different, so we work with each of our partners to create a tailor-made solution that meets their specific needs and budget. Whether you need to upgrade your existing system or install a new one from scratch, we can help to generate a solution.
Contact us today to learn more about our services or get started on your custom quote.