Wowza Report: Low Latency Crucial for Sports Apps

With the massive audiences attracted by events such as the Super Bowl, World Cup, and Olympics, live-streaming sports apps tend to have relatively higher latency. When thousands or millions of fans are trying to access a single stream simultaneously, latency is often injected to allow content delivery networks (CDNs) to cache content—so the same high-quality video stream can be delivered to users on a wide variety of devices and operating systems, with different connections and bandwidth. Wowza has published its findings into the latency impacts of the most popular sports live streaming apps. 

The 2017 Super Bowl broke records for live-streaming viewership through the FOX Sports GO app, with the previous record being held by NBC Sports’ broadcasts of the 2016 Rio Olympics. Akamai estimates 500 million viewers will soon be live-streaming primetime sports online.

From WatchESPN to FoxSports Go to MLB At Bat to NBC Sports to the NCAA March Madness Live app, Wowza looked at how users on desktops and mobile are experiencing the game.

CLICK HERE for Wowza’s full report entitled “Spoiler Alert: Low Latency Crucial for Sports Apps”.