Live sports streaming at scale
Speaker: Thierry Fautier, Managing Director, Your Media Transformation
We observe a race to achieve the highest viewership numbers in the US sports market, with Netflix now competing for the top spot by reporting a peak viewership of 27 million (streaming+broadcast) during the NFL Christmas games Beyoncé Bowl half-time show. As we have no official number just for the concurrent streaming sessions on Netflix, we estimate the US streaming peak was at 25M sessions..
While the figures are impressive, in a unicast environment, they represent a substantial technological investment. This approach must also be scalable and capable of mitigating risks effectively.
We will begin by examining all the levers available to handle traffic peaks, including codec selection, congestion control mechanisms, and user access limitations.
Next, we will analyze the various strategies employed to scale sports events, such as:
• Traditional multi-public CDNs (used in the majority of deployments),
• Single private CDNs (e.g., Netflix Open Connect),
• Hybrid public/private CDN models (e.g., DAZN, Disney).
We will compare these approaches and attempt to envision a future where traffic demands increase tenfold.
Finally, we will explore alternative solutions, such as multicast ABR and P2P, and assess their current adoption levels.
Slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mOP_jAW-lg7a9sTOkdm8NWDRsSboZ6Fw/view?usp=sharing