Akamai tested ITV streaming for World Cup

Akamai Technologies tested ITV’s streaming services ahead of the World Cup.

Its CloudTest service, which uses multiple cloud locations across the country, including Akamai Cloud by Linode locations, to host virtual audiences that can replicate millions of concurrent viewers, was used to send a total of 5.25 million virtual users through the video streaming test journey. 

This included components delivered by ITV and seven of its partners, and identified several areas of improvement ahead of the large audiences expected for the World Cup. This was especially important as ITV launched its ITVX streaming platform while the tournament was taking place.

England’s quarter-final defeat to France ended up as the broadcaster’s most watched game, with over 15 million streams - and a peak TV audience of 23 million.

Luke Holder, head of service delivery at ITV, said: “The World Cup always a critical event for ITV and even more so with the launch of ITVX, our new streaming service which we planned to coincide with the tournament. The simulations we ran with Akamai CloudTest proved to be invaluable, allowing us to expose and fix issues well before the first kickoff and giving us the confidence we would deliver a high-quality service throughout the tournament.”