The recent boxing match between the legendary Mike Tyson and former YouTuber Jake Paul sparked debate and criticism for more than one reason. Millions tuned in to stream the fight on Netflix on the 15th of November 2024, which was offered by the platform at no extra cost. According to several sources, viewership peaked at around a ground-breaking 65 million concurrent streams. However, the hugely popular streaming platform evidently could not handle the traffic, and received nearly 85,000 complaints about outages and glitches that were logged before and during the fight. Netflix and other popular streaming sites are grappling with growing viewerships and the increasing demand for high QoE. Everybody wants lower latency and real-time watching, especially for such highly anticipated events. But traditional streaming strategies using CDNs are straining under the pressure. 

Is it a TKO for traditional streaming? And how can P2P technology, such as System73’s Edge Intelligence, offer more reliable, low latency live streams?

CDNs are straining under the pressure

Despite being watched by 60 million households, the Tyson-Paul fight can hardly be deemed a streaming success. Despite the platform's extensive experience in delivering on-demand content, the highly-anticipated event was marred by widespread technical issues, including buffering and outages, leaving millions of viewers frustrated and sparking the hashtag #NetflixCrash on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. This failed broadcast highlighted a critical vulnerability in traditional streaming, which is content providers’ reliance on Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to manage massive real-time audiences. 

While CDNs have been the backbone of digital streaming for years, they struggle to scale dynamically under the weight of millions of concurrent users. Events such as the Tyson-Paul fight, and other live sports features, draw record-breaking viewerships, which push traditional streaming infrastructures beyond capacity, increasing congestion and leading to outages, glitches and unsatisfied audiences. Netflix’s struggle to handle 65 million concurrent streams demonstrates the urgency for platforms and providers to explore alternative solutions that prioritize low-latency live streams and deliver high QoE to all viewers while remaining cost effective. 

P2P as the backbone of future live streams 

Netflix is due to broadcast the NFL Christmas Day games this year, leaving them a small window to iron out any technical issues before associating themselves forevermore with poor quality live streams. And competition is fierce, as Amazon Prime has proved it can successfully offer NFL games and Premier League matches in the UK, as well as being a Champions League game provider. Evidently, it is possible to broadcast highly anticipated live events that attract millions of concurrent viewers, and maintain high-quality streams. Technologies such as peer-to-peer (P2P) content delivery and innovative solutions such as our Edge Intelligence offer a promising alternative to relying on traditional CDNs. 

By leveraging end user devices to share streaming loads, these systems significantly reduce the strain on traditional servers, which helps ensure higher quality streams for all viewers. Unlike more traditional systems, they can grow and react dynamically to spikes in traffic without the need for prior planning, delivering high QoE even during peak demand. System73’s Edge Intelligence solution even grows stronger as more viewers join, leveraging their connections to enhance streaming performance.

System73 delivers the UEFA Champions League Final

On the 1st of June 2024, System73 demonstrated that the future of live streaming is bright by successfully delivering the UEFA Champions League final to a global audience. By employing Edge Intelligence, our customer was able to maintain 90% of viewers on the highest bitrate supported by their device, achieving exceptional QoE. Even in traditionally challenging regions such as Latin America, where sparse CDN infrastructures often result in poor streaming performance, System73 was able to overcome these hurdles thanks to our P2P technology, and provide reliable, high-quality streams in places such as Peru. What’s more, according to our estimates, we saved our customer an impressive 65% in operations costs, making our solution one of the most affordable on the market and proving that successful streaming is possible without incurring unsustainable costs. Visit this 2024 blog article for a full report. 

For more information about System73, Edge Intelligence, or to book a call with our team, visit system73.com.

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