World Cup breaks streaming records

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World Cup matches to set new streaming records

World Cup matches to set new streaming records

June 12, 2014 08.34 Europe/London By Robert Briel

Legal, semi-legal and pirate streaming websites will set record levels of traffic during the next few weeks during FIFA World Cup 2014 Brasil football.

According to the recently published annual Visual Networking Index (VNI) from Cisco, millions of people are expected to view games and/or highlights via the internet. Video streaming and IP broadcast of the World Cup is anticipated to generate 4.3 exabytes of IP traffic.

A survey recently conducted by streaming web TV service TV Player in the UK, reveals that 81% of its respondents will be watching as many live football matches as possible this year. 68% said that they will watch the games at home, with only 18% preferring to watch the matches in the pub. 66% of respondents will be looking to keep up-to-date on the games through various websites and 28% via social media.

Watching live football on TV Player were the most popular activity in May including the UEFA Champions League Final, the FA Cup Final Live as well as the World Championship Snooker, which shows the exponential demand for watching live sport on TV across desktop, mobile and tablet.

“2014 will see a rise in consumers watching the biggest football event of the year live across multiple devices,” said Marie Ellis, Marketing Manager, TVPlayer.

“With the games broadcast throughout the day as well as in the early hours in the morning, TVPlayer offers football fans the chance to view live matches whether they are at work or even at home in bed.”

TV Player streams all live terrestrial TV channels via the web and via mobile apps to viewers in the UK. These include BBC and ITV who hold the rights to the World Cup games. Across Europe, live streaming apps from official World Cup broadcasters are also set to distribute the live games to viewers on PCs and mobile devices. These include ARD and ZDF in Germany and NOS of The Netherlands.

All these official streaming services and apps are legal and are usually geo-blocked. However, we will undoubtably see services such as Canada-based UnoTelly, who provide SmartDNS and VPN geo-restriction removal solutions.

“UnoTelly will let people stream all FIFA WC Games for absolutely free, regardless of where they live or if they are UnoTelly subscribers,” wrote marketing representative Kostas.

“In more detail, we are going to offer free access to several streaming stations (BBC, ITV, CBC, ZDF, and more) which will broadcast the FIFA World Cup games Live. Furthermore, we will provide a live feed to inform users about everyday’s matches schedule and where they can watch them.”

Services such as UnoTelly’s have blossomed, allowing people the access services such as Hulu Plus, HBO Go and Netflix in countries where such premium on-demand portals are not (yet) available. With the upcoming football event, new record are set to be broken.
 

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World Cup breaks streaming records


The 2014 World Cup has set new records for streaming data traffic around the world, as football fans watch matches online in greater numbers than ever before.

Content delivery network provider Akamai has confirmed this is the biggest event in terms of video content streaming on record, due to huge demand from fans accessing content live from the online platforms of FIFA’s Media Rights Licensees.

In the US alone, a record-breaking 5.3 million unique viewers tuned in for the round-of-16 match between Belgium and the US on ESPN and Univision platforms, representing unprecedented traffic for both broadcasters.

“We are proud to say that this FIFA World Cup has been the biggest multimedia sporting event in history, with more people watching matches and highlights online than ever before,” said FIFA Director of TV Niclas Ericson.

FIFA TV actively supports its Media Rights Licensees with a variety of multimedia services including fully managed “white-label” solutions for the web, tablets and smartphones. It is the first time that a project on such a scale has been offered to the broadcast community. The services are delivered by World Cup broadcast production service provider HBS, with the support of EVS, Netco Sports and deltatre.

40 FIFA Media Rights Licensees have booked around 120 multimedia services for match coverage, giving them the ability to live stream multiple feeds of FIFA World Cup matches and to offer video-on-demand coverage from up to 24 camera angles to fans across the planet.

The World Cup “white-label” second screen app has been downloaded more than 10 million times in more than 20 broadcast territories since its launch at the start of June, with up to three million fans accessing videos, statistics and live match content each day.

24 million unique users have already watched some 15 million hours of content through FIFA’s multimedia services solutions alone.

“More and more football fans want to watch high quality, live coverage of matches on their tablets or mobile phones, as well as on their televisions,” said Stefan Wildemann, Manager of Sales and Distribution at FIFA TV. “These figures show just how fast our industry is adapting to a truly multimedia world. Only on the digital platforms can fans watch the FIFA World Cup from every possible angle.”
 
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