Thursday's World Cup match between the U.S. and Germany produced the watershed moment for TV Everywhere that ESPN predicted before the tournament, with a network-reported peak of 1.7 million concurrent streams on the Watch ESPN streaming app to see three-time champion Germany's 1-0 win.
However, the moment might have been a little too big for ESPN's IT infrastructure, with a number of subscribers experiencing streaming interruptions, and the network, in a terse statement, conceding that it experienced "limited [technical] issues due to the unprecedented demand." (As Netflix's (NASDAQ: NFLX) disputes with ISPs like Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) show, however, assigning and taking blame for streaming issues can be tricky.)
The all-time-best TV Everywhere numbers were generated by NBCU's February 21 coverage of the U.S./Canada men's hockey game at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, which generated 2.12 million unique viewers.
Coupled with the peak 750,000 non-authenticated concurrent streams reported by fellow World Cup rights holder Univision Thursday, U.S.-vs-Germany is now the biggest TV Everywhere event. (For its part, Univision didn't report any technical issues.)
Of course, it's also important to note that all of these TV Everywhere metrics are self-reported at this point and not arbitrated by a third-part source like comScore or Nielsen.
But content delivery network provider Akamai did tell FierceOnlineVideo on Thursday that the combined streaming for the U.S.-Germany and Portugal-Ghana matches generated more than 6 Tbps of traffic, selling a new global record for a streamed event.
For more:
- read this Re/code story
- read this Multichannel News story
- read this NBC News story
Related links:
World Cup streaming of U.S.-Germany, Portugal-Ghana games tops 6 Tbps
TV Everywhere and the World Cup" Big ad dollars, but no 'watershed' for viewership
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