Arsenal Transitions to Limelight Orchestrate To Power Club Site

Arsenal Broadband Ltd has transitioned to the Limelight Orchestrate Delivery and Performance services to bring Arsenal team news to millions of fans worldwide.

Avid fans of the popular Barclays Premier League football club frequently visit Arsenal.com for the latest match results, game schedules and profiles of their favorite players. With millions of daily page views, Arsenal needed a platform that could support a consistent and engaging digital experience on Arsenal.com.

To add to the challenge, they also needed to be ready, without notice, for spikes in traffic that occur during the football transfer window or when fans seek to confirm rumors. Quick spikes in site traffic also occur when fans look for information about who is playing that day or for live match commentary, match results, or post-match reports. Often without warning, up to 250,000 unique visitors must be served within a small window of time.

“If you haven’t got a CDN that protects you from traffic spikes that come at you like a big tsunami wave, you will find that you will have outages,” says John Dollin, senior systems and operations manager, Arsenal Broadband Ltd. “The Limelight support and implementation team never let us down. The transition from our previous CDN went so smoothly folks didn’t even know when we had moved over.”

“During a proof of concept phase, Limelight’s global private delivery network consistently out-performed the competition in each of the many key markets Arsenal Football Club needs to reach,” said Jonathan Smith, group vice president and managing director, EMEA at Limelight. “Once their decision was made, our planning and implementation team worked tirelessly to ensure the transition was seamless.”