Akamai Streamed to 800,000 Viewers Per Minute During Super Bowl
The Super Bowl was available for free streaming this year, with no pay TV authentication required. NBC's decision certainly made the game accessible for many fans who couldn't be near a TV. Akamai powered that streaming, and made a few stats available about big game performance.
In a blog post, John Bishop, Akamai's vice president and CTO for its Media Business Unit, said that the NBC Sports Live Extra stream averaged 800,000 viewers per minute, with a peak performance of 1.3 million concurrent users.
A few days prior to the game, Bishop wrote that Akamai would use 160,000 edge servers distributed in over 1,200 networks to stream the Super Bowl. Algorithms selected the best route for each stream, he noted.
But how did fans like the overall experience? A review in Sports Business Daily knocked the app for not providing any extra features, and simply offering the same feed that TV viewers saw. There was no way to access player stats or chat on social media. The reviewer also noted that the stream was often slow to load and the app crashed occasionally.
While NBC and Akamai have gotten live streaming down for mass viewing, here's hoping they provide a richer online viewing experience next year.
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