The 2027 Ryder Cup at Adare Manor will become one of the largest temporary connected sporting environments ever created in Ireland, with HPE confirmed as a Worldwide Supplier and charged with delivering the technology infrastructure underpinning the event.

The one Year to Go celebrations for the tournament have begun in Limerick, and we will be covering what emerges on Sport for Business tomorrow.

This is an important commercial announcement though, in advance, linking the event with Ireland’s prominent global reputation as a strong country for technology investment

The technology company will deploy a Self-Driving Network using Wi-Fi 7 across the 230-acre tournament site, connecting spectators, volunteers, media, staff, operational systems and devices throughout Ryder Cup week.

It will also expand the Connected Intelligence Center introduced at the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, bringing together networking, operational data and artificial intelligence to provide organisers with a single real-time view of tournament operations.

HPE says the system will increasingly be capable of anticipating potential issues, adapting workflows and implementing solutions as organisers move towards what the company describes as autonomous or “agentic” IT operations.

More than 250,000 spectators are expected at Adare Manor, while the Ryder Cup says its worldwide audience will exceed 650 million viewers.

Connectivity will stretch across the golf course itself as well as grandstands, hospitality facilities, media compounds and tournament operational centres.

HPE’s relationship with the Ryder Cup began in Paris in 2018, expanded at Marco Simone in Rome in 2023 and developed further at Bethpage Black last year, when it became a Worldwide Supplier.

At Bethpage, the technology infrastructure included 650 Wi-Fi 6E access points, 170 network switches, user-experience sensors and AI-enabled cameras. AI was also used to analyse spectator behaviour and queueing as well as demand for merchandise, food and beverage.

Adare Manor will represent the next iteration of that technology.

The Wi-Fi network moves to Wi-Fi 7, while the Connected Intelligence Center will be powered by HPE Private Cloud AI and bring together data, AI models and tools from across the tournament.

 

Sport for Business Perspective

There will understandably be enormous attention over the next 12 months on roads, accommodation, transport, hospitality and the physical infrastructure required to bring the Ryder Cup to Limerick.

This announcement highlights another infrastructure requirement which is every bit as important.

For three days in September 2027, Adare Manor effectively becomes a small digital city.

Tens of thousands of people will arrive each day expecting the same connectivity they experience in permanent urban environments, while broadcasters, journalists, tournament officials, hospitality providers, sponsors and commercial operators simultaneously depend on the same digital ecosystem.

Ticketing, accreditation, payments, scoring, security, hospitality, communications, media operations and the spectator experience increasingly rely upon connectivity.

But even more than that, the network is not simply connecting devices. The data generated by those devices can increasingly influence how the event itself is managed. Bethpage demonstrated some of that potential.

If organisers can identify queues developing before they become problematic, understand where crowds are moving, anticipate demand at food and merchandise outlets and spot technology failures before spectators experience them, data becomes part of event management rather than merely something collected afterwards. 

That has obvious applications beyond the golf course.

Ireland is seeking to attract and host major international sporting events over the coming decade. The Ryder Cup will be one of the most complex sporting events ever staged here and consequently an important demonstration of the country’s capacity to deliver them.

The technology helps the Ryder Cup deliver a better event. The Ryder Cup gives HPE one of sport’s most demanding environments in which to demonstrate what its technology can do.

And when Europe and the United States arrive at Adare Manor next September, some of the most important infrastructure on the course will be the infrastructure spectators never actually see.

 

 

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Image Credit: Ryder Cup

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