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A group of around 30 people is all that is needed to create a Mexican Wave, the phenomenon among crowds of sports fans made popular by the 1986 soccer World Cup in Mexico, a Hungarian researcher has found.

The Mexican Wave -- or "ola" -- spreads around the stadium often involving thousands of people, each of them standing up section by section with their arms in the air before sitting down again in what becomes a huge swirling motion around the stadium.

Hungarian researcher Tamas Vicsek, from the University of Budapest mapped analog models to measure and predict the behaviour of the wave pattern, based on models used to map forest fires and wave propagation in heart tissue.

Using the interpretation of "excitable media," Vicsek found that models already adapted could be generalised to include social behaviour, according to his findings published in Thursday's edition of the British magazine Nature.

Researchers analysed wave patterns in 14 Mexican Waves in stadiums containing at least 50,000 people.

They found that only a few people were needed to start a wave going and that the 'ola' was most likely to start at particularly crucial moments in a game. 

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