Every large-scale event has two operations running at once. There's the one the audience sees (the game, the concert, the festival) and then there’s the one they don't: the constant coordination between teams working across the venue to keep everything running safely and smoothly.
That second operation depends entirely on communications.
It's how a medical team gets directed to an incident in the stands or how security coordinates a gate closure without creating a bottleneck somewhere else. None of it works if the people behind the scenes can't talk to each other clearly, instantly, and reliably.
Most of the time, event attendees don’t even see this operation that is keeping the show running smoothly. But the teams behind the scenes know exactly how much depends on getting communications right.
On any given event day, various teams are responsible for different parts of the experience, moving at a different pace, and making decisions that affect everything else happening around them. Depending on the event, that can include:
Security and crowd management
Medical and emergency response
Venue operations and facilities
Food, beverage and logistics
Broadcast and media teams
Coaching and performance staff
At sporting events, there’s an additional layer of real-time decision-making, connecting coaches, analysts, trainers, and players between the sideline, locker rooms, and control boxes.
At festivals and other temporary or remote events, the challenge is even greater. Familiar environments are often replaced with temporary setups, sometimes built from scratch across multiple staging areas, then expected to perform immediately.
Large scale conferences and conventions also face similar challenges with temporary stages and structures across multiple areas and various front-facing and back-of-house teams requiring seamless coordination across the event, sometimes over several days.
Across all of these scenarios, one thing stays constant: every team is making decisions that rely on fast, clear, and reliable communication.
The challenges aren’t always obvious until something goes wrong. Some common issues include:
Network congestion: Whether it’s putting 30,000 people in a single venue or setting up a temporary event in an area that doesn’t usually get much traffic, cellular networks can get saturated quickly. Staff end up competing with the crowd for bandwidth, and when the network overloads, staff comms can suffer.
High-noise environments: Stadiums, concerts, and outdoor festivals are loud, and if audio isn't clear enough to cut through, messages get missed or misheard.
Temporary and unfamiliar setups: Touring events, festivals, and away games mean comms have to work in venues the team may never have operated in before.
Multiple teams with competing priorities: Different teams need different channels, access levels and priorities, but they all need to coexist within the same shared communications environment.
None of these challenges are insurmountable, but they do reflect the everyday reality for event teams, exposing the limits of communication systems designed for office environments or consumer use.
While every event is different, the underlying principles of connected teams tend to look the same.
Dedicated equipment: While small events with low-level risks can rely on direct line of site radios, for larger crowds or higher-risk environments, dedicated equipment provides a critical layer of reliability. Comms that run independently of public cellular networks allow staff to stay connected regardless of how many people are in the venue.
Clear, intelligible audio: Clear audio reduces repetition, avoids confusion, and keeps teams focused on the task. The right accessories can play a big role here, allowing messages need to cut through noise the first time, even in loud environments.
Fast, simple deployment: Event teams don’t have time for complex configurations. Comms need to be easy to deploy, especially in temporary or multi-venue environments.
Scalable to the event: A flexible solution should be able to accommodate a range of events (within reason) without requiring a completely different setup each time.
Interoperability: Events often bring together multiple organizations using different equipment, and communications need to work across those environments.
When these fundamentals are in place, communications become invisible in the best way. Teams stop thinking about whether their system will work and can focus entirely on delivering a seamless event experience.
For many event teams, choosing the right communication system means navigating a difficult trade-off.
On one end, consumer-grade radios are easy to access and simple to use, but they often fall short when it comes to audio clarity, coverage, and structured team coordination.
On the other, mission-critical systems offer advanced capability but can introduce cost and complexity that don’t align with short-term or mobile event operations.
However, many teams need something in between, something that delivers a reliable, professional-grade result, without unnecessary overhead.
DMR Tier 2 solutions like Tait Open2 and DMR Tier 3 solutions like Tait OpenTrunk are designed to fill that gap. Both solutions offer:
Clear, consistent audio in demanding environments
Reliable coverage that isn’t dependent on public networks
Optional direct mode for faster deployment for temporary locations and touring setups
Infrastructure options to expand coverage and capacity for consistent venue-wide communication across events
They are also built on open standards to give teams flexibility. Rather than being locked into a single ecosystem, these solutions can integrate with existing equipment, connect across different organizations, and adapt as needs evolve. For event environments, that flexibility makes a measurable difference.
DMR Tier 2 (Tait Open2) is built for fast-moving, self-contained events where simplicity and speed matter most. For many sports games, small-to-medium festivals, or one-day events, Tier 2 gives teams exactly what they need: reliable, professional-grade communications that just work, without slowing down operations.
On the other hand, DMR Tier 3 (Tait OpenTrunk) is designed for larger, more complex environments where coordination needs to scale. DMR Tier 3 enables more advanced safety and security features and is capable of supporting high call volumes across multiple teams. Tait OpenTrunk can also be configured for DMR Tier 2 interoperability for increased flexibility.
This makes Tier 3 a better fit for major events and venues running multiple concurrent operations that need priority, coordination, and efficiency at scale, while Tier 2 is ideal for simple events with straightforward comms needs.
The best events look effortless because someone made sure the operation behind them worked. The coordination, the split-second decisions, the seamless handoffs between teams — none of it happens without communications that are built for the environment.
For the team behind the scenes, that reliability isn't just a technical requirement. It's what makes everything else possible.
Talk to a Tait expert about the right communication solution for your venue or event.