The different mass gatherings occurring all over the world, such as sports and religious events, pose public health concerns due to the increased risk of transmitting infectious diseases in these settings. When these events are concluded, the travel patterns of the returning international participants could further contribute to a rapid spread of infectious diseases causing global epidemics. The need to establish real-time disease outbreak surveillance at global mass gatherings motivates new technologies and advanced computational methods. The rapid expansion of digital devices and access to internet applications among participants in these gatherings generate a massive amount of data. Once being collected and processed, these data along with other health-related data can make significant contributions to improve disease surveillance systems at global mass gatherings. In this paper, we present an overview of the main existing approaches for monitoring outbreaks of infectious diseases in these events and illustrate the perspectives and opportunities of Big Data in these application areas.