Mass live events are the new normal in 2024, whether viewers are streaming sports, e-sports, or social media. According to a recent report by Stream Hatchet, live streaming in Q2 of 2024 is up by 10% compared to Q2 of 2023, constituting 8.5 billion hours of live streaming across all event categories. Given this colossal surge in demand, it is imperative that content publishers maintain high streaming standards for mass-audience events, such as the recent Wild Card NFL game, which attracted a total audience of 27.6 million viewers. Maintaining high standards primarily means maintaining a high quality of experience (QoE) for audience members. But with such intense peaks of traffic, how might they plan and execute live-streamed events and lock in failsafe strategies that meet their and their viewer's expectations?

In this article, we take a closer look at some of the results from a survey by Qwilt that looks at just that: How content publishers approach large-scale live events in 2024.

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Technical concerns regarding video delivery

Content publishers' technical concerns for large-scale live event streaming often include latency, CDN performance, CDN capacity, measuring QoE, and improving performance in real-time. They worry about ensuring minimal delay to deliver a seamless real-time experience, managing the massive amount of data being transmitted to avoid buffering, and scaling infrastructure to accommodate sudden spikes in viewership. Content security and user authentication can also be challenging aspects of live content streaming. 

According to Qwilt’s latest survey, content publishers' greatest technical concerns are CDN performance and CDN capacity. Given the upheaval in the past year in the commercial CDN industry —exits of Lumen and Stackpath from the market—content publishers are left with fewer options for CDN partnerships and increasing levels of traffic to contend with (70% of all internet traffic (by volume) is delivered through CDNs). Respondents agreed that the quality of their subscribers’ experience often depends heavily on a third-party CDN, whose performance can be challenging to predict and control.

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A multi-CDN strategy

A multi-CDN strategy involves using multiple CDN providers to deliver content to viewers, enhancing reliability, performance, and coverage by leveraging the strengths of different CDNs. For live event streaming, a multi-CDN strategy helps manage traffic spikes, reduces latency, and provides redundancy in case one CDN experiences issues. It ensures a smoother viewing experience for audiences by dynamically routing them to the optimal CDN based on factors like network conditions, geographic location, and server load. 

In the past, a multi-CDN strategy might have meant one content publisher partnered with six CDNs or more in order to support and deliver a single live event. However, as shown by Qwilt’s most recent survey, in 2024, some 42% of respondents would partner with 3 CDNs or less in planning for large-scale live events, compared to 17% of respondents in 2022. While content publishers agree a multi-CDN strategy is still needed for streaming live events, the general consensus is that they can achieve high-quality broadcasting with less support than before. 

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The most important streaming quality metrics

For content publishers, understanding which streaming quality metrics matter most can be the difference between retaining viewers and losing them to competitors. High streaming quality essentially translates into a high-quality experience for the audience, which means minimal to zero buffering events, fast video start times, and a high average bitrate for a viewer’s device, among other considerations. When these metrics start to diminish, content publishers can experience higher rates of churn. This, in turn, can lead to a loss in revenue, as fewer subscribers or viewers mean less income from subscriptions, ads, and other monetization strategies.

Looking at the key concerns reported by respondents to Qwilt’s survey, we find that rebuffering, connection-induced rebuffering, and average bitrate are the top QoE metrics most important to content publishers in 2024. Compared to the 2022 survey, where ‘Exits before video start’ was one of the top three metrics of concern, the 2024 survey shows that more recently, it has been replaced by ‘Connection-induced rebuffering rate,’ suggesting the best practice for QoE measurement and reporting may have evolved based on respondents’ experience with more live events.

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Edge Delivery: System73’s multi-CDN solution

Findings from the Qwilt survey have confirmed that content publishers still strongly agree that multiple CDNs are needed for mass live events. At System73, we have developed our own multi-CDN solution known as Edge Delivery. This intelligent multi-CDN decisioning solution automates mid-stream switching by constantly monitoring and conducting a network analysis of the intervening nodes and links across the network. 

As an AI-based technology, Edge Delivery is capable of predicting congestion and determining the optimal delivery route for your content to provide the optimal bitrate for customer retention —not only the highest but the most stable, which reduces churn. Edge Delivery’s proactive decision-making selects the lowest-cost CDN(s) that meet your QoE objectives while decreasing decisioning costs by 50%. This solution is ideal for VoD and live content publishers that want to offer the highest quality while keeping their operational costs at the lowest. 

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

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