Riverbed Technology is unveiling new research that states that almost two-thirds of UK inhabitants claim they will watch this summer’s Olympic Games online. As a result, streaming websites need to be prepared to cope with this demand.
The research identified the Men’s 100m sprint final as the Olympic event most likely to be watched online with an average of 55 per cent of all respondents. The next most popular online event was the Men’s diving final, with an average of 29 per cent, with the bronze medal going to the Men’s 100m freestyle swimming, which had an average of 27 per cent of respondents1. Women’s beach volleyball came in at sixth place with 22 per cent of respondents overall, but almost a third of UK men (28 per cent) claim it was one of the events that they would watch online.
The study, carried out on behalf of Riverbed® and conducted by research specialists OnePoll, surveyed more than 1000 people across the UK. The research uncovered that one in three UK citizens said that they were likely to watch more of this summer’s events over the Internet, as compared to previous Olympic Games. It also found that the almost half of UK online Olympic viewers would be unwilling to tolerate delays of over two minutes when streaming services before moving to a different source.
Residents of Yorkshire and Humberside said that they will be willing to wait an average of 2.8 minutes for a clear stream, identifying them as the least patient county when it came to online buffering. This is compared to inhabitants of Northern Ireland who were the most patient region, stating that they will be prepared to wait an average of 3.75 minutes to stream Olympic events before moving on. The survey also found that one in ten UK inhabitants would wait less than a minute before changing to another site if they experienced difficulties.
Jim Darragh, senior vice president and general manager, Stingray™ Business Unit, at Riverbed said: “Europeans are changing their viewing habits. And global sporting events like Olympic Games often create traffic spikes as people use their PCs, laptops or mobile devices to watch their favorite athletes, get real-time updates on events, and purchase event-related merchandise. Organisations must take extra measures to meet the demand spike created by the Olympics. If they do not, and their websites are not responsive at peak times, then they could see their viewers giving up and choosing to watch the Games through other means instead – that potentially means lost advertising revenue and forgone e-commerce opportunities.”
Riverbed works with organisations worldwide to address performance challenges encountered by enterprises users and consumers when accessing applications and data online. The Riverbed Stingray family provides application delivery controller (ADC) and web content optimisation (WCO) solutions that enable enterprises to create,manage and deliver key services quickly, more flexibly and at a lower cost. Stingray also allows organisations to control and optimise web services by inspecting, transforming, prioritising and routing application traffic, so that the online experience remains fast and reliable even during major events such as the Olympics.
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