INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Are you ready for a festival of football From 14 June until 15 July 2018, 12 stadiums in 11 cities across Russia will host the 21st FIFA
the final destined to be played at the 80,000 capacity Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, which is also home to the Spartak Stadium
Brand new, purpose built-for-2018 stadia include the US$280 million Volgograd Arena (where England play Tunisia on 18 June), the US$290m
Nizhny Novgorod Stadium (where England face Panama on 24 June), the US$330m Rostov Arena, the US$300 million Mordovia Arena in Saransk, the
US$320 million Samara Arena, and the Saint Petersburg Stadium
Credit: Ria NovolstiOthers include the radically upgraded Ekaterinburg Arena, which is the furthest east of all the stadia, Sochi's Fisht
square metres) on its outer west side.Perhaps the oddest stadium, at least geographically, is the brand new US$300m Kaliningrad Stadium
(where England will face Belgium on 28 June)
Kaliningrad is a Russian enclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, and completely cut-off from mainland Russia.The centre of each
host city will also have a FIFA World Cup 2018 Fan Fest for those without tickets, with each big enough for between 15,000 and 40,000
people.Russia 2018: travel infrastructureThe distances between the host cities are huge
For instance, Volgograd is a whopping 600 miles from Moscow
It's hoped that fans will either fly or take overnight trips on Russian Railways since organisers have laid-on440,000 free seats for
ticket holders with officialFan ID
Traveling between the host cities, 728 long-distance trains will ply 31 routes
Not surprisingly, all railway stations will have airport-style security.FIFA estimates that this World Cup will generate over 2.1 million
tonnes of carbon dioxide, made-up of international travel to Russia and travel between the host cities
FIFA will offset the 11.2% it directly controls, plus 2.9 tonnes per ticket holder traveling from abroad thatsigns-up
everyone around the world will watch it in Full HD
The host broadcast for Russia 2018, HBS, will have 37 cameras at each match, eight capable of dual UHD/HDR and 1080p/SDR output, and another
eight delivering dual 1080p/HDR and 1080p/SDR output
There will also be eight super-slow-motion and two ultra-motion cameras, a cable-cam and a cineflex heli-cam, and some occasional 360-degree
a broadcast infrastructure fit for 4K, so the BBC and ITV will both broadcast matches in 1080i
This will be limited to certain televisions, however.Thanks to Fox Sports, US fans will be able to watch 36 matches on Fox, and 28 on FS1,
all in 4K HDR, and extra channels for watching on phones and tablets including a a stat channel, cable-cam channel, and a tactical-camera
participating teams, the World Cup in Russia will host 36 referees and 63 assistant referees, representing 46 different countries
Thirteen of those will act solely as Video Assistant Referees (VAR), with the controversial technologyto be used for the first time at a
Already tested in a handful of games in England, Germany and Italy, it's now official that every match will have a VAR plus three
assistants.The vast majority of the fans in the stadium will have their smartphones at the ready.Warren DumanskiInfrastructure-wise, it
largely uses existing TV technology, with the extra match official sitting in the TV truck watching multiple slow-motion replays to help
on TV, but VAR trials in the UK have resulted in very confused spectators
"The vast majority of the fans in the stadium will have their smartphones at the ready, looking to find out why that goal was disallowed, or
communications capacity is being actively managed and flexed to allow the live audience to keep track of developments on their mobile, the
require massive bandwidth
reporting that mobile phone networks in the vicinity handled the equivalent of 2.6 million photos.Although there will be free WiFi around
"The Russian Federation was in the bottom 20 of 88 countries we analysed in 4G availability," says Kevin Fitchard, Lead Analyst at mobile
analytics company OpenSignal, whose State of LTE report from February 2018 compared 4G performance in 88 countries
"Russia's average 4G download speed was 15.8 Mbps, a full megabit slower than the global LTE connection average of 16.9 Mbps." Compare
that to the astonishing 40 Mbps average download speeds available in South Korea at the recent Winter Olympics.Russia 2018: sports science
infrastructureSports science infrastructure has been part of the game for a long time
All teams at the World Cup will use a FIFA-approved cameras-only platform called Electronic Performance Tracking System (EPTS), with most
These devices track players' movements, collecting close to 1,000 data points per second to track the 'load' and intensity of movements by
players.For matches, one pitch-side coach and one analyst in the stands each get a tablet
The tablets show display live footage, replays, and basic player metrics, with the MEMs devices delivering rich data on heart-rate response
"Take the Zlatan Ibrahimovic goal from 2006 when he dribbled past five players to score, he never really travelled that far at any
particular pace but that doesn't mean the movement wasn't demanding as he twisted and turned so much to break through a number of the
opposition to score," says Rob Heyworth, a Sports Scientist atCatapult Sports, which which provides MEMs devices and analysis to 10 World
attached to the players which collect data in 3D, 100 times per second to give us a clear image of the amount of work a player has
done."MEMs is seens as critical in World Cup where matches are played with only a three or four day turnaround to control each player's
'load' (and, hence, their tiredness) and keep them injury-free.Russia 2018: security and cybersecurityIn case you hadn't noticed, there's
a kinda Cold War-esque political tension thing going on between Russia and 'The West'
There has also been some concern over fans' safety, but if the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014 is anything to go by, security will be very
close roads around controlled zones for fans
Huey, Senior Threat Intelligence Analyst atEclecticIQ
Phishing, website defacement, targeted malware campaigns and rogue wireless networks are all expected (there weretargeted campaignsat the
banking and credit card information, deface or disrupt a local government or event sponsors' web presence, and more," says Huey
Russia 2018 be the biggest World Cup ever Yes, but not for long; by 2026 there will be 48 teams competing rather than the current 32 teams,
with FIFA considering bringing that expansionforward to Qatar 2022
Images)TheIndianSubcontinent's World Cup coverage is brought to you in association with Honor.mRYuP2xw3mCnmL6A5cYhEQ.jpg#
