Every September, 63,000 runners set off from Newcastle city centre for the South Shields coast. For over fifteen years, NovaConnect has designed, built and operated the technology that carries the world's biggest half marathon — from the first timing mat to the final TV frame.
Connectivity, every mile — the Great North Run 2026 film.
The course crosses two city centres, the Tyne Bridge and miles of coastline — none of it built for event technology. Every timing point, medical post, commentary position and broadcast camera needs connectivity that isn't there the week before, and is gone again the week after. On top of that sit hundreds of thousands of spectators, saturating the mobile networks precisely when the event's own systems need them most.
We build the course its own infrastructure: event-grade fibre into the key compounds, bonded 4G/5G along the route and satellite where nothing else reaches — 344 connectivity points working as a single network. Every critical link has a second and a third path behind it, switching automatically, monitored end to end by our own team from event control.
Timing and results for 63,000 finishers. Live participant tracking for the families lining the route. The event-day app, the medical software, event control and TV integration — each on its own protected network, each staffed and monitored from the first runner to the last.
Alongside the operational network, we deliver broadcast connectivity and live streamed coverage produced on our in-house, software-defined broadcast stack — with production fluency through our RTS award-winning sister company FilmNova. The same team that builds the network makes the pictures move.
“With 63,000 runners on the road and the world watching, the technology simply has to work. NovaConnect has carried that responsibility for over fifteen years — connectivity, tracking, systems — and it has never let the Great North Run down.”
Whatever the scale, the site or the stakes — talk to us about what we'd deploy.
