Live streaming of sporting events is continuing to pick up steam, with World Cup soccer viewing driving spikes even higher than February's record-setting Sochi Olympics.
Top global traffic spikes in the World Cup's first week. (Source: Akamai) |
The World Cup match between Germany and Portugal drove online streaming traffic to 4.3 Tbps globally on Monday, exceeding the Winter Olympics high of 3.5 Tbps, Akamai reported on a webpage dedicated to traffic numbers during the tournament. And according to a live chart of traffic spikes on the page, Tuesday evening's Brazil-Mexico matchup spiked even higher, at 4.6 Tbps.
The United States vs. Ghana saw a spike of 3.2 Tbps, and Iran vs. Nigeria topped at 2.6 Tbps.
ESPN, meanwhile, is seeing its own record-setting numbers among U.S. viewers of the World Cup. The USA-Ghana match set a product record for WatchESPN, with a 469,000 minute audience and a total of 1.4 million viewers and 62.4 million minutes viewed.
"WatchESPN has averaged 247,000 viewers in the average minute across 14 World Cup matches, which represents a seven percent lift over the ESPN Networks' English language TV audience for a total of 4,359,000 viewers across TV and WatchESPN," the sportscaster said in a press release.
WatchESPN posted a 157 percent increase in viewers during the first 11 World Cup games.
For more:
- see Akamai's website
- ESPN has this release and this release
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