2018 FIFA World Cup: OTT peak traffic doubles on Edgeware TV CDNs

TV CDN technology pioneer Edgeware has reported that many of its customers have experienced a doubling of their peak CDN streaming traffic on match days during the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Its analytics data shows that, as expected, major cultural and sporting events like this create sudden surges in demand on OTT services. This highlights why providers need to have the necessary infrastructure in place to cope with events taking place on the biggest stages of all. 

With its recently announced solution for ‘big live’ events, Edgeware’s TV CDNs have been engineered to automatically predict increases in user sessions, so that the expected load can be balanced across the network’s servers. This reduces the risk of congestion for everyone requesting the live programming. The TV CDN can also consolidate requests between the delivery server and content owner’s origin, to reduce peak demands.

“We call events like the World Cup ‘Big Live’ OTT,” said Johan Bolin, VP Products at Edgeware. “As our data shows, peak demand on our customers’ TV CDNs has typically doubled every match-day during the tournament. And as we see more and more broadcasters turning to OTT to create new ‘beyond broadcast’ services, such as 4K and Virtual Reality, it has never been more important to have the right infrastructure in place.”

Over half of all streaming requests happen within the first two minutes of a popular event, placing tremendous strain when onboarding viewers onto any delivery network. And with social media playing an increasingly active role when watching live programming, any unwanted buffering or glitches can create a delayed stream that’s susceptible to spoilers which can impact the overall viewing experience.

Building a dedicated CDN for the distribution of Internet-delivered TV enables a provider to overcome shared capacity issues that can be unavoidable with pay-as-you-go CDN services. By having more control of their own traffic, the simultaneous onboarding of hundreds of thousands of viewers across a variety of devices can be achieved, glitch-free and with lower latency.