Wales Women saw a new record set for their final game of the 2024 Guinness Women’s Six Nations with 10,592 in attendance at Principality Stadium.
- Vodafone’s revolutionary 5G Fan App trialled as Wales Women’s team make history with record-breaking crowd for a women’s match in Wales, with 10,592 in attendance at Principality Stadium.
- Using augmented reality (AR) and Vodafone’s superfast 5G, the app helps enhance fan experiences by allowing users to track player stats and explore live elements of the game by simply holding their phones up to the pitch.
- The app will be available to fans at Principality Stadium for the 2025 Six Nations Championship.
Vodafone, Founding Principal Partner of Wales Women’s and Girls’ Rugby, trialled its revolutionary 5G Fan App at this weekend’s historic 2024 Guinness Women’s Six Nations fixture which saw Wales defeat Italy by 22-20.
Featuring augmented reality (AR) technology, it uses Vodafone’s reliable, award-winning network* to bring fans closer to the action than ever before. The 5G Fan App allows rugby fans to channel their inner sports broadcaster, placing a wealth of data and insights at their fingertips. This includes team line-ups and player bios, as well as a wide variety of individual stats, including tackles made, total passes, turnovers won and metres made.
Vodafone’s superfast 5G – brought to the stadium ahead of the 2024 Guinness Six Nations Championships – will enable rugby fans using the app to see the stats live and explore elements of the game in real-time, instead of waiting until after the final whistle is blown. By holding up their phones to the pitch, fans can view these insights without missing a second of the game – with Vodafone’s low latency 5G ensuring the data is provided instantly.
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The 5G Fan App also uses AR to commemorate the game’s key events, such as a try, a conversion or a penalty kick by projecting pop-up announcement animations onto a fan’s view of the pitch through their phone, taking match day celebrations to the next level.
The historic match between Wales and Italy was the first time a standalone Wales Women’s international fixture has been played at Principality Stadium. With 10,592 rugby fans in attendance, a record for a Wales Women’s Rugby match, the fixture marked a truly significant moment for the team and a symbol of the transformational growth of the women’s game.
Gwen Crabb, Second Row, Wales Women’s team, said: “Playing in front of a record-breaking crowd at Principality Stadium is such a big moment for the Wales Women’s team and one we’ll remember for a long time.
“Vodafone is such an important supporter of the women’s game here in Wales and it’s great that, as part of their partnership, they chose this historic occasion to trial the 5G Fan App.
“It has introduced a completely new element to the live game experience, helping fans to understand exactly what’s unfolding on the pitch in front of them and increasing accessibility to the game, which is a hugely significant step!”
From back row to front page: Wales Women’s Rugby team looks ahead to Guinness Women’s Six Nations
Wales Women’s team continues to make headlines with a special edition cover appearance in Women’s Health magazine – a first for a women’s rugby team – thanks to a ground-breaking media partnership with Vodafone.
Maria Koutsoudakis, Brand Director, Vodafone UK, said: “This weekend’s record-breaking Wales Women’s match was a real testament to the progression of the women’s game and a fantastic showcase of what rugby is all about.
“We were thrilled to mark the occasion by trialling our new Vodafone 5G Fan App at Principality Stadium, which harnesses 5G’s faster speeds, lower latency and greater capacity to bring the AR tech to life and connect rugby fans with the game they love in an exciting new way.”
The Vodafone 5G Fan App has been developed with Immersiv.io and will be available to fans at Principality Stadium at the 2025 Six Nations Championship.
Accelerating 5G could add £139 million to rugby’s matchday economy
From hospitality to ticketing, matchday trade at stadia would benefit from a countrywide 5G SA rollout.
A recent report from Vodafone, ‘The 5G Match Day’, highlighted how 5G-enabled innovations – like the 5G Fan App – will continue to play a major role in supercharging British sport. An accelerated roll-out of 5G and 5G Standalone (SA) is set to spark further development of immersive and seamless fan experiences, as well as the elevation of grassroots sport and access to much-needed revenue for struggling clubs.
As part of its proposed merger with Three UK, Vodafone UK has committed to delivering 5G SA to 99% of the UK population by 2034. This will cover all of the UK’s 120 top-tier rugby, football and cricket stadiums, as well as the vast majority of its 4,000+ grassroots facilities, so that all fans and clubs can benefit from the introduction of newly enabled technology.
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Notes to Editors
* Reliable, award-winning network: The UK relies on Vodafone as a network provider as it: i) powers critical national infrastructure and 77% of emergency services, ii) has coverage in 99% of UK homes, iii) covers 96% of the UK and iv) has won numerous awards. See full details and awards on our Network page.
5G:
- You must have a 5G enabled device on the Vodafone 5G network, a Vodafone 5G plan and 5G coverage in the area that you are in. Coverage may be affected by a number of factors.
What is 5G Standalone (5G SA)?
- Until now, 5G has sat on existing networks and therefore relied on 4G technology. 5G Standalone (5G SA) offers faster data speeds, near-real time latency (the time it takes for the network to connect) as well as network slicing, offering dedicated slices of the network for specialist applications, such as virtual reality, autonomous vehicles, connected buildings or communications channels for emergency services. Learn more about 5G and 5G SA.
