Spark 5G Race Zone

The America’s Cup, which takes place every four years, is one of the biggest events on the Kiwi calendar. New Zealand hosted the 36th America’s Cup in Auckland in 2021. Spark hosted a Race Zone for fans at the Viaduct, the hub of the action, in the months leading up to and during the event. The idea was to promote the power of 5G and demonstrate how it assists in making our boats go faster. 

Satellite were brought on board to manage the booking and registration process of the visitors to the Race Zone, as well as the content and data collection from a couple of the experiences. We also developed a 5G portal, showcasing the power of 5G connectivity across different devices, and an area where visitors could pose with digital versions of the crew or with the sought-after Prada Cup Trophy. 

5G Portal — A true product demonstration
of 5G connectivity, latency & speed

The 5G Portal was a curved grid of over 30 devices (mobile phones and tablets) all connected via 5G and controlled by a central tablet. It was on this tablet that visitors could interact with and change settings that updated the images across all the devices. Images were pulled through from various America’s Cup related social media feeds based on specific Hashtags and handlers. 

Visitors could also take a selfie and add their face to the “support team”. Their image was then added onto a device in the grid and displayed along with all the other “fans” who had taken selfies in support of our NZ Team, creating an immersive wall of fan support.

1:1 screens

The massive 86 inch 1:1 screens enabled visitors to learn more about the crew; they could also snap a photo with the crew or pose with the sought-after Prada Cup Trophy. 

Visitors could browse through bios on each crew member to discover their favourite music track — if they tapped their card a Spotify link for that song would be sent to them. They could also select five members of the crew and pose for a photo with them. These photos would be sent to the user’s email if they tapped their card when the photo had been taken. 

Each visitor to the Spark 5G Race Zone registered and was provided with a card containing an RFID lanyard that contained their details. At designated areas, visitors could tap the card and have their content emailed to them, such as photos from the 1:1 screens or their boat they built in the “Design a Boat” area.