The arrival of smartphones changed the way of attending football, but the figures for the use of mobile phones during last Sunday's classic at the Spotify Camp Nou between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid go further. It was a real madness, according to the figures recorded by the Movistar network at the Barça stadium. Data traffic had record increases like never before.
The download traffic at peak hours, the data that goes from the Movistar network to the mobile phones of its customers, for example to load internet pages or view content, was 17% higher than the previous maximum, which was set on March 5, 2023, with Barça-València.
More intense was the data upload traffic from Movistar customers' mobiles to the network, which was 55% of the previous maximum. The sending of videos from the stands is one of the causes of this increase, precisely in a match that registered the highest attendance of the season, with 95,745 spectators, very close to the total capacity available now that part of the third tier has been dismantled of the stadium.
In addition to the data, the voice traffic during the classic from the stadium increased by 40% compared to what is usual during a match day. Many people relayed to others what they were experiencing in the stands.
Lastly, one of the most spectacular data on the intense use of mobile phones at Spotify Camp Nou is that the Movistar network came to serve more than 22,000 simultaneous customers in the stadium area, which means that almost a quarter of of the entire public came to be using the mobile at the same time, without counting the thousands of mobile phones that connected to the networks of other companies.
