ITV and Akamai Team Up to Broadcast the Euros

Akamai Technologies is delighted to announce that it was one of ITV’s trusted partners to deliver the infrastructure necessary to live stream this year’s Euros. As their favorite football teams contend for victory, viewers expect a seamless broadcast, bringing them as close to the action as possible. Akamai was able to deliver this and more for ITV’s biggest event of the year without a glitch — from testing ITV’s capabilities in advance of the Euros, to broadcasting and securing the safe delivery of the football tournament.

ITV used Akamai’s CloudTest to identify issues and mitigate risks before predicted spikes in traffic, helping ensure the broadcast would be deployed effectively nationwide. Using multiple cloud locations across the country, including Akamai cloud locations, to host virtual audiences, the CloudTest service is designed to quickly generate simulations on demand that can replicate millions of concurrent viewers. Akamai’s experienced team of performance engineers worked with ITV to deliver further high-scale testing throughout the tournament.

The opportunity to test the infrastructure before the event helped to ensure the effective delivery of a record-breaking amount of traffic for ITV, especially during the semifinals. As their viewership went from few to millions in seconds, ITV needed to ensure they could scale quickly and deliver an exceptional experience to their audience of football fans. Akamai helped them achieve exactly this, and there was not a single support ticket sent to Akamai’s tech team for the duration of the games. It was also essential to ensure that the broadcast was secure from a cybersecurity perspective, and ITV used Akamai’s suite of security solutions to fend off any attacks. Akamai leveraged its visibility of threats to fully safeguard ITV.

Speaking about the collaboration between Akamai and ITV, Mark Ison (Director of Engineering at ITV) said: “The Akamai team went above and beyond to help us plan and deliver our Euros football coverage. They have been embedded with our teams for many years and were by our side to help deliver this nationally important tournament, enabling ITVX to deliver for our viewers, while smashing previous records for traffic and throughput. We could not have achieved this without Akamai’s support, and we look forward to more joint successes in future.”