South Africa: Rugby final draws record streaming demand
November 6, 2019
By Chris Forrester
The November 2nd Rugby World Cup final between South Africa and England placed MultiChoice’s DStv NOW under a severe test which it apparently passed with flying colours.
Niclas Ekdahl, CEO of the Connected Video division at MultiChoice, which was responsible for supplying the OTT feed, said that they were streaming the equivalent of 4TB of data per minute to sports fans.
Ekdahl said that the viewing figures for the final were the highest-ever and some three-times more peak concurrent viewers thank in the already popular earlier games, and double the number which viewed the 2018 FIFA World Cup. “Over the course of the day we served more than half a million unique users.”
“I’m pleased we came out on top and look forward to working with our partners to beef up streaming ability ready for 10 times and even 100 times the traffic we’re seeing now, because the one thing we know for sure is that streaming video is going to keep growing,” said Ekdahl.
He said that DStv NOW’s users had grown four-fold in the past two years and the service is now regularly streaming more than 1 million hours of material daily