ESPN on Thursday afternoon reached 1.7 million concurrent viewers on WatchESPN toward the end of the Germany-U.S. FIFA World Cup match. The audience figure, while not specific to that match but rather all of WatchESPN, set a new record for the platform. Final audience numbers for the game are expected later, but the match is expected to be one of the biggest sports events in the history of live streaming. ESPN and individual viewers did report some technical issues with the online feed this afternoon, particularly in the first half of the match. WatchESPN and NBC's Olympic coverage were authenticated streams, while Fox's Super Bowl XLVIII coverage was not (Eric Fisher, Staff Writer). An ESPN rep said the net was "investigating some limited issues" with the WatchESPN app due to "unprecedented demand." VARIETY's Todd Spangler reported Univision "apparently did not have similar issues delivering the live stream online," as Univision Digital delivered a record 750,000 "live concurrent streams" for Germany-U.S. The WatchESPN issues "may have been related to the infrastructure that handles the authentication process to verify a user’s pay-TV subscription, which ESPN requires to access the service" (VARIETY.com, 6/26).
HIGH ENGINE: USA TODAY's Marco della Cava notes Germany-U.S. "emerged as the most searched term in the nation on Google" during Thursday's game and "ranked fourth globally, after typically dominant searches for Facebook, YouTube and Google." Google Associate Product Marketing Manager Madeline Kane: "There was all this talk before the tournament that Americans weren't interested in soccer, and that no one cared about the U.S. team, and we're able to use real-time data to show that's not the case. ... We just passed 1 billion searches for the Cup overall. We knew this would be a great opportunity to share information from a global conversation" (USA TODAY, 6/27). Meanwhile, the WALL STREET JOURNAL's Drew Fitzgerald cited Akami Technologies data as showing that Thursday's two Group G games -- Germany-U.S. and Portugal-Ghana -- "gobbled up more Internet bandwidth than any other live sporting event." Akami said that the games "drew more than six terabits of data per second, suggesting more than 3.5 million viewers tuned in over the Internet at the same time." Akami Senior VP & GM of Media Products Division Bill Wheaton said that more than a third of that streaming traffic "went to North America ... and about a quarter of the traffic went to mobile devices" (WSJ.com, 6/26).
DIGITAL DYNAMISM: RE/CODE's Peter Kafka reported Twitter has counted "more than 300 million tweets about the tournament during its first 15 days." That is nearly twice as many as the 160 million tweets counted "during the 16 days of the London Olympics" in '12. Twitter said that the most-tweeted about game "was the opener between Brazil and Croatia -- and that the next four most popular games also involved countries other than America." This "shouldn’t be surprising, since most of Twitter’s users live outside of America" (RECODE.net, 6/26).
UNIVISION CONTINUES TO DRAW: BROADCASTING & CABLE's Michael Malone wrote online viewing "has been on fire since day one of the Cup, and it has not let up." Univision’s owned markets "have had over 27 million live streams" through Wednesday. The top 13 Univision O&O markets "have averaged over 370,000 unique users per match." Through Wednesday, Univision Digital’s World Cup live streaming "has more than doubled" its entire '10 World Cup streaming tally. Furthermore, 87% of World Cup traffic "is on a mobile device, compared to 37% back" in '10. Univision Television Group President Kevin Cuddihy said that with the round of 16 now set, the net "is well poised for more boomer numbers, with the likes of Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay, Chile and Costa Rica, moving on" (BROADCASTINGCABLE.com, 6/26).
