World Cup streaming tops Winter Olympics at 4.3 Tbps and climbing

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.

Akamai World Cup streaming

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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