As the Official Connectivity Integration Partner of the 2026 Commonwealth Games, currently taking place in Glasgow, it’s no surprise that Riedel’s solutions are being used en masse across the four venues hosting the 10 sports making up this year’s games.

As Jan Sander, senior account manger, multisports events at Riedel, says: “We’re not only the Official Connectivity Integration Provider, but we’re also delivering all the AV services, all the intercom and all the Diva network around associated services including all the radios on security, LAN WAN, BCN, and then also the WiFi, so pretty much all the technology except the lighting and timing and scoring.” 

Diva+, the company’s holistic media backbone, is at the heart of the solution, with the Riedel team operating out of a truck on site at the SEC.

“Diva is the nerve system of the games,” he continues. “The truck is the heart and the brain where we do our main operations – all the fibre connections are coming to this position. Generally, we span two fibre networks or two vans across all competition venues. We also interconnect the venues to each other, not only with signals but also with intercom and radio. There are a couple of outside venues like the airport and the bus station that are interconnected with push-to-talk over cellular radios that are seamlessly integrated into the Tetra radios we’re using here, and also into the intercom panels.”

On the benefits of Diva+, he says: “I would say it’s the modern way to interconnect games. It’s easy to set up, and it’s flexible and scalable. As an example, on the day of the Opening Ceremony, Timing and Scoring asked us if they could have a feed from the broadcasters to one of their tech tables in the SEC. Usually in the old way, you would bring in a lot of people and then pull in a cable. But with the way we deployed this, we could just connect a patch cable on the node in the broadcast component, do the same on the other hand, and then with 10 minutes of routing that was done. Generally we can reduce the amount of cabling required by about 50%.”

Riedel’s offering on the intercom side is also extensive. “We have two Artist-1024s in the truck, that are doing everything around the SEC. They are mainly responsible for all the venues here, and the technical operations centre in the BBC Scotland building. For backup purposes we then have Artist-1024 in the other venues outside of the campus mainly just as a backup if we lose the connection. However, everything is controlled from the truck on site.”

The simplicity of the combined Diva+ Easy5G offering also means that time on site is reduced. 

“Set up was super compressed – we arrived 10 days before the Opening Ceremony,” he continues. “The whole games were under a lot of time pressure, and this is the genius part also of the solution here, because it’s so flexible, because it’s reduced in the amount of labour it takes, you can be very, very fast.”

The system was largely prepared in Wuppertal with only minor adjustments needed on site.

“It’s our multifunction truck on site, so we came in, parked it, deployed one of the two antenna masts, and then we have the radio coverage around here, so you can immediately start working and already communicate while setting up intercom and the rest of it.

“That whole integration is a really huge thing here, where we’re trying to do things differently. So the whole [SEC] campus has Bolero coverage.” 

This is partly because of the opening and closing ceremonies, which were held in the Hydro but with the cast and athletes held in a different area of the campus. Bolero ensures seamless communication between and across the different spaces. 

The short transition time between the Opening Ceremony ending and the sport action beginning was also a challenge.

“We had eight hours to transition from ceremonies to the actual sports setup in the Hydro,” recalls Sander. “At the end, it’s only three hours from the last event finishing and the Closing Ceremony beginning. This is literally one of the biggest arguments for the Diva+ solution because it can be simply pre-programmed and rerouted. Everything was rerouted within seconds. You just load in a new configuration and it’s done. Yes, you have to do some patching, of course, but it’s not the case anymore that you need to pull tremendous amounts of cable and relocate it.”