20% will watch Olympics online
July 17, 2012
Interxion has released the findings of a survey of over 2,000 UK citizens aged 18 and over, conducted by YouGov, looking at how consumers intend to use technology to keep up to date with sport and their preferences towards media consumption.
Consumers will have more choice than ever before in how they follow sporting action this summer and updates over the coming months. While traditional TV at home (65 per cent) and public screens (10 per cent) are the most popular medium for watching or listening to sport , 9 per cent will be following the action on personal devices such as a home PC, 7 per cent will be watching on a laptop, and 3 per cent on a tablet.
Increasingly tech-savvy consumers are set to place significant demands on London’s IT infrastructure this summer. The biggest priorities for those streaming online content are maintaining consistent connectivity (21 per cent), quality of sound/picture (19 per cent) and speed of connection (15 per cent). London’s data centres will play a key role in ensuring consumer appetite for media coverage this summer will be satisfied. Many digital media organisations are benefiting from the digital communities housed in colocation data centres in the capital. By choosing to be part of one of these communities with immediate access to satellite, Internet exchanges and key Content Delivery Networks, digital media organisations can ensure that their content flows smoothly over the network to the end user.
Nationally, one of the biggest contributors to the Internet surge is expected to be the BBC, which plans to provide live coverage from multiple sporting events. The broadcaster predicts that the footage, streamed to computers across Britain, will help generate in excess of a terabit (1 trillion bits) per second of traffic at peak times – the equivalent of 1,500 people downloading a feature-length DVD-quality movie every minute.
Greg McCulloch, UK Managing Director at Interxion, added, “It’s clear that significantly more content from sport this summer will be consumed online than ever before, with online becoming a genuine alternative to sitting in front of the television. The key to delivering a great sports experience to a digital audience will be low-latency delivery of the real-time content.