BT: 16% broadband spike during Women’s World Cup
August 21, 2023

BT has reported that the Women’s World Cup has driven spikes of up to 16 per cent in BT’s broadband data traffic as people streamed the Lionesses’ on-pitch heroics live – highlighting the rising popularity of the women’s game.
The August 20th final against Spain saw the biggest surge of all the games, with 866TB of data used to stream the Lionesses’ match via the BBC and ITV using BT’s broadband network – a tournament record and more than seven times the amount of data used to stream England’s opening game vs Haiti (118.5TB).
The semi-final clash against Sam Kerr’s Australia saw the second highest levels of data traffic, with BT customers using 500TB of data to stream the match. During the game against the Matildas, BT customers used more fixed data streaming the game than they did using Facebook and TikTok.
England’s dramatic penalty shoot-out victory over Nigeria in the Round of 16 saw the third highest data usage (494TB). The match against the Super Falcons, which saw star-player Lauren James sent off, saw broadband traffic spike by 15.8 per cent compared to an average day. England’s tight group stage match vs Denmark, which they needed to win to ensure passage through to the knockout rounds, saw BT’s fixed data traffic increase almost 8 per cent during the match period, with BT customers using 237TB of data to stream it.
Further BT insigyhs show:
- BBC hit a max of 275,413 subscribers at any one time during the match, with a total of 1,212,344 subscribers tuning in over the game time.
- ITV hit a max of 20,009 subscribers at any one time during the match, with a total of 118,650 subscribers tuning in over the game time.
- This means a total of 1,330,994 subscribers tuned into the Women’s World Cup final overall.