ITV and Akamai Team Up To Simulate Virtual Viewers Ahead of the World Cup

Akamai Technologies is delighted to announce that it was ITV’s trusted partner to test the complex infrastructure necessary to live stream this year’s World Cup. ITV used Akamai’s CloudTest service to stress-test its streaming capabilities ahead of the World Cup and the launch of its new streaming platform ITVX. 

ITV used CloudTest to identify issues and mitigate risks before predicted spikes in traffic, helping ensure games were screened nationwide without a hitch. Using multiple cloud locations across the country, including Akamai Cloud by Linode 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.

Since testing began in October, Akamai and ITV sent a total of 5.25 million virtual users through the video streaming test journey, which span components delivered by ITV and  seven of its partners. In doing so, Akamai were able to help identify several areas of improvement ahead of the major events. During this rigorous testing, the Akamai team was fully integrated within ITV, ensuring an efficient process which enabled ITV to address all major issues ahead of the massive demand seen in the World Cup.

ITV’s biggest match of the tournament was England vs France on 10th December which was delivered flawlessly to millions of viewers across the ITV platform and set a new traffic record for ITV’s use of the Akamai CDN.

Luke Holder (Head of Service Delivery at ITV) said: “The World Cup is 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.”