An example method includes estimating a number of people expected to attend a non-ticketed event, based on electronic data including social media postings, estimating a per-person amount of network traffic expected to be generated on a communications network during the non-ticketed event, based at least in part on historical per-person network traffic statistics for a historical event of a similar type to the non-ticketed event, calculating an amount of total network traffic expected to be generated during the non-ticketed event, based at least on the number of people expected to attend the non-ticketed event and the per-person amount of network traffic, and implementing a modification to an infrastructure of the communications network in a geographic location of the non-ticketed event, based at least in part on the amount of total network traffic expected to be generated during the non-ticketed event.