#OTTuesday: iTV on Live Streaming the World Cup

Imagine you’re iTV. One of the UK’s biggest commercial broadcasters. You have the rights for the World Cup and England has made the semi-finals. The whole country is watching. How do you make sure you’re meeting the gold standard of delivering a glitch-free, “TV-like experience” over the internet? iTV’s Director of Online Technology & Operations, Andy Burnett, sat down with our own Campbell Foster to walk us through iTV’s World Cup strategy, key success factors and lessons learned from this exact scenario during the 2018 tournament this year.

The 2018 World Cup was one the most viewed live streaming events ever. In fact, within the first 10 days of the tournament, total video streaming traffic on Akamai surpassed all 64 matches of the 2014 tournament in Brazil. UK broadcaster iTV managed to pull it off almost entirely without a hitch.

iTV also attributes its success to building a “Data Center of Excellence.” For a relatively small investment, they gained deeper insight into ad performance, quality of service and page analytics. These insights allowed them to make data-driven decisions instead of relying on gut instinct alone.

In the end, preparing to stream the biggest events comes down to preparation. If the infrastructure is set up right and the teams have the right run drills against potential crises, then you can expect the event at hand — no matter how massive or important — to perform like any other broadcast.  

Check out our second #OTTuesday video above for more of Andy’s lessons learned from live streaming one of the biggest sporting events of the year, and his thoughts on AVOD innovation, the format evolution and more.

Shane Keats is Director of Industry Marketing for Media at Akamai.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from The Akamai Blog authored by Shane Keats. Read the original post at: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAkamaiBlog/~3/GuwVTO08UhI/ottuesday-itv-on-live-streaming-the-world-cup.html