Case Study: The Jockey Club achieves reliable, high-capacity Wi‑Fi and enhanced fan engagement at Cheltenham with Riverbed

The Jockey Club Races out of the Stalls with Xirrus Wi-Fi Network at Cheltenham Festival

The Jockey Club’s Cheltenham Racecourse, a 350‑acre venue with a 67,500 capacity that hosts more than 235,000 attendees during the Cheltenham Festival, needed a reliable way to engage spectators, members, staff, sponsors and media via mobile devices. The challenge was to provide high‑capacity, ubiquitous Wi‑Fi across a large, high‑density, highly mobile crowd (including sponsor and bookie requirements), while capturing user analytics and rolling out the system on a tight timetable.

eircom Business led a seven‑week deployment of 190 Xirrus wireless arrays (XR‑4820, XR‑2425H, XR‑520H) with UCOPIA handling guest access and analytics and Xirrus Application Control ensuring performance. The network supported up to 50,000 unique connections over four days, peaked at 19,022 active sessions, logged over 3,000 daily registrations, handled 2,500 simultaneous devices (scalable to 20,000), required no technical support calls during the event, and delivered improved fan engagement, sponsor services and actionable user insights.

The Jockey Club

David Dommett

Group IS Director