On Sunday the 14th of July, millions of soccer fans around the world tuned in to watch the CONMEBOL Copa América final between Argentina and Colombia. System73 was one of them, contributing not only as viewers but also as facilitators of the event. In terms of the audience’s quality of experience streaming the match live via our customer’s channel, we were able to maintain 95% on the highest rendition for their device, with 1080p being the highest resolution of the bitrate ladder, ensuring maximum QoE for almost every viewer.

To add to this success, we were able to offload 70% of the audience onto our centrally orchestrated broadcasting tree, thanks to our proprietary peer-to-peer network content delivery solution, Edge Intelligence, thereby bypassing the congestion suffered by edge CDN servers and delivering the game directly to the end users’ device. Crowning the successful delivery of this live event, by enabling our Edge Intelligence solution, our customer was able to save 50% on delivery costs. 

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70% offload: Edge Intelligence strikes again

One of the greatest strengths of our Edge Intelligence live content delivery solution is its ability to offload streaming traffic onto a centrally orchestrated broadcasting tree, our proprietary peer-to-peer network model. This offloading reduces our customers’ reliance on physical CDNs, alleviating congestion in the network and the probability of buffering events for the end user. Edge Intelligence uses CDNs as touchpoints, in order to establish contact with new devices joining the network, after which time, each segment of content is delivered directly to the viewer to maintain the highest QoE. In alleviating our customers' dependence on physical servers and consequently, bandwidth requirements, Edge Intelligence can save our customers significant delivery costs.

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Your most cost-effective solution: 50% cost savings

System73 has once again been able to save our customer a game-changing 50% in operational costs thanks to our global pricing of $2 per terabyte for Edge Intelligence. Following on from our recent success delivering the uninterrupted live content of the UEFA Champions League final to viewers all over the world, which saved our customer an impressive 65% in delivery costs, we are proud to deem Edge Intelligence as one of the most economical live content delivery solutions on the market. The positive results achieved seen following both the Champions League final and the Copa America, two momentous dates on the international soccer calendar, demonstrate the bearing our solution can have on high-impact content providers. 

Oftentimes, content providers struggle to anticipate the size of the audience they will be broadcasting to during a given sporting event, such as the Copa America. With millions of fans both sides of the South-North American border, and even around the world, predicting how much bandwidth will be required from partner CDNs is a complicated and often impossible task. Edge Intelligence on the other hand is infinitely scalable, and requires no prior planning or forewarning from our customers. The automated and scalable nature of Edge Intelligence allows our customers to redirect their time, attention and resources to other critical areas of the business, such as content creation, or research.

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Quality of experience: 95% of viewers on the highest rendition for their device

As well as resulting in significant cost savings for our customers, Edge Intelligence’s ability to offload content onto its peer-to-peer network also results in much more seamless delivery, bypassing network congestion caused by high influxes of traffic that often peak during popular live sporting events such as the Copa America. On this occasion, Edge Intelligence was able to maintain 95% of viewers on the highest rendition available on their device, with 1080p being the highest resolution of the bitrate ladder. As attested for by a recent Qwilt survey, rebuffering events and video playback failures are among the greatest concerns among content publishers in 2024. Edge Intelligence is capable of eliminating these potentially churn-inducing events to maintain QoE for almost every viewer in the network. 

Edge Intelligence’s ability to deliver such flawless content is made possible thanks to Edge Analytics. Edge Analytics provides unprecedented visibility over the open internet and works ceaselessly in parallel with Edge Intelligence to feed the solution with comprehensive data about the most efficient route via which to deliver the live content to the viewer. Should Edge Analytics detect congestion in the network, Edge Intelligence will automatically reroute content via a different pathway in order to deliver the content as fast as possible. Both solutions are built with powerful algorithms, and therefore employ machine learning to gain an ever greater understanding of the network, to anticipate potential congestion ahead of time based on past experiences. 

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Conclusions and takeaways 

Delivering the Copa America final, off the back of the successful delivery of the UEFA Champions League final, was another milestone achievement for System73, showcasing our ability to provide a seamless and high-quality viewing experience to millions of soccer fans worldwide. 

With 95% of viewers enjoying the highest resolution available on their devices, and significant delivery cost savings for our customer, this event has once again allowed us to underscore the effectiveness and efficiency of our Edge Intelligence solution. The ability to offload 70% of the audience onto a centrally orchestrated broadcasting tree not only alleviated reliance on CDNs, it also allowed our customer to bypass network congestion and ensure uninterrupted viewing for their audience.

This success story also reinforces the value of our peer-to-peer network model in managing unpredictable audience sizes and high traffic volumes, particularly for large-scale live events. Looking forward, we will continue to refine our solutions to further enhance content delivery efficiency and quality. Our commitment to innovation and excellence positions us to meet the evolving needs of content providers and viewers’ increasing expectations of high QoE. 

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