ITV and Akamai simulated massive audiences before the World Cup to test the infrastructure

Akamai Technologies was the trusted partner of ITV to test its CloudTest service before the World Cup and the launch of the new ITVX platform.

ITV used CloudTest to identify problems and mitigate risks ahead of anticipated spikes in traffic, which helped ensure matches were spread across the country smoothly.

Using multiple cloud locations across the country, including Akamai Cloud by Linode, to host virtual audiences, the CloudTest service quickly generated on-demand simulations that replicated millions of simultaneous viewers.

Akamai's experienced team of performance engineers worked with ITV to conduct further large-scale testing throughout the World Cup.

Since testing began in October, Akamai and ITV have sent a total of 5.25 million virtual users through the streaming video testing process, encompassing components delivered by ITV and seven of its partners. By doing so, Akamai was able to help identify several areas of improvement before the main events. During these rigorous tests, the Akamai team was fully integrated into ITV, ensuring an efficient process that allowed ITV to address all major issues ahead of the massive demand seen at the World Cup.

The most important match of the ITV tournament was England versus France, on December 10, which was seamlessly delivered to millions of viewers on the ITV platform and set a new traffic record for ITV's use of Akamai CDN.

Luke Holder, Head of Service Delivery at ITV, highlights that "the World Cup is always a critical event for ITV and even more so with the launch of ITVX, our new streaming service which we planned to coincide with the tournament. The simulations we carried out with Akamai CloudTest proved to be invaluable, allowing us to expose and solve problems well before the first kick-off and giving us confidence that we would provide a high quality service throughout the tournament."