A sold-out crowd of roughly 350,000 fans at the 2025 Indianapolis 500 used a record amount of data on Verizon’s network, according to numbers released by the carrier.
Inside and outside the venue, data volume totaled nearly 172 terabytes over the day, a 35% increase over 2024 amid 5G’s continued adoption. Verizon estimated that tally is the equivalent of moving 57 million digital photos.
Verizon’s largest spectator event last year was the Coachella music festival, where concertgoers used 129 terabytes of data. More than 1 million Iowa State Fair visitors set the highest overall mark in 2024, using 393.1 terabytes of data.
Those numbers are all significantly higher than the records Swifties set during Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour back in 2023. At Dallas’ AT&T Stadium, for instance, attendees used 29 terabytes of data.
Within sports, Verizon and AT&T registered a combined 67 terabytes of data usage on Super Bowl Sunday in and around New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome this year. Wi-Fi usage, meanwhile, dropped to 17.2 terabytes.
Inside Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a quarter of data used was spent on uploaded data, as fans communicated with each other and shared their experiences in real time. Attendees were also encouraged to stream different race angles on their phones or view highlights via a mobile app.
By selling out the grandstands for the first time since 2016, the Indianapolis 500 was able to lift its local TV blackout. In Fox’s first year of a $25 million annual IndyCar tie-up, the race averaged 7.05 million viewers, the most since 2008.
Editor’s note: The Indianapolis 500 race, IndyCar and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway are owned by Penske Entertainment Corporation, a subsidiary of Penske Corporation that is owned and operated by Roger Penske. The Team Penske IndyCar team is sponsored by Verizon. Sportico is owned by Penske Media Corporation (PMC), operated by Jay Penske, Roger’s son. PMC operates independently of Penske Corporation.
