CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—A different kind of Olympic record was broken during NBC’s coverage of the 2016 Rio Olympics in August, as a total of 3.3 billion streaming minutes were provided, including 2.71 billion live, per Akamai. NBC’s online video streaming, website and video delivery was supported by Akamai Technologies.
Akamai provided NBC with its Media Delivery and Acceleration Services to stream live and on-demand video of its coverage through NBCOlympics.com, the NBC Sports mobile app, and connected TV platforms. Akamai’s ingest capabilities enabled content to be downlinked to and delivered across the Akamai platform. NBC also utilized Akamai’s Ion for web and mobile experiences across devices and networks, and the Kona Site Defender to protect NBC Olympic sites against DDoS and web attacks.
“We not only set new benchmarks for the amount of content delivered; we also for the first time live streamed to connected TVs and introduced virtual reality experiences, all of which provided viewers with more choice than ever for how, when and where they were able to enjoy NBC Olympics’ coverage from Rio,” said Rick Cordella, executive vice president and general manager, digital media, NBC Sports Group.
