Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor … vs. Showtime?
It was the biggest fight of the year, and Showtime got hit harder than Conor McGregor.
Last week’s match between the brash MMA fighter and champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. was touted to be “the most widely distributed pay-per-view event of all time” [1]. As anticipated, millions of global fans tuned in, but just as the fight was about to start, the network’s live streaming app got KO’d. And that’s when the real trash talking began. Social media immediately exploded with top trending hashtags like #ShowtimeNoTime, #refund and #fail.
Earlier this week, attorneys in Oregon filed a class-action lawsuit [2] on behalf of a man who paid a $99.99 fee to stream the fight in high-definition, only to experience the same thing many other non-litigious fans were getting: poor resolution, error messages and freezes during the bout. The lawsuit alleges that thousands of others had similar streaming issues, citing tweets from angry consumers. Showtime has now promised to issue refunds to some customers [3].
So what actually happened? According to the lawsuit, Showtime “rushed its pay-per-view streaming service to market, without securing enough networking bandwidth to support the number of subscribers who paid to watch the fight.” But how could a multi-billion dollar network like Showtime make that kind of alleged mistake?
“The public Internet was not built specifically for streaming video. Typically the reason networks go down is because of overload,” says IBM’s Michael Clanton.
Bandwidth shortages are becoming a frustratingly common predicament for providers of live and on-demand streaming. Take Showtime’s competitor HBO for example: Last June, for instance, more than 15,000 HBO subscribers were unable to stream the latest Game of Thrones episode after “overwhelming demand” brought the network’s app crashing down [4]. That same app was even experiencing buffering and crashing issues in the Latin American market during the current season 7 premiere.
Incidents like this are expected to multiply in the months and years to come as streaming demand continues to skyrocket. Which means more unhappy customers, more refund demands and more quippy hashtags.
According to Ustream’s Arpad Kun, IP video traffic is expected to comprise 80 percent of all IP traffic by 2019 — up from 67 percent in 2014. Content delivery network providers, Kun writes, have come up with some short-term solutions to provide customers better service amongst unprecedented growth. They’ve learned to offload long haul connections, reduce round-trip times, and protect servers from traffic spikes.
But as they reach their physical limits, today’s networks aren’t on track to keep up with demand. A majority of business leaders give the current model two years before the booming traffic completely overwhelms.
“Today’s network infrastructures were not built to allow the agility required for growth, next-generation services and offerings and innovation,” writes IBM’s Steven Teitzel.
That’s why more providers are choosing to virtualize their network in the cloud, enabling an infrastructure that’s intelligent, agile and responsive to fluctuating demand. With a network that can adapt, evolve and think for itself, businesses can reach beyond the limits of their network’s capacity and stay in the ring. In this world of a consumer’s paradise, customer loyalty is already the most fickle is has ever been in this industry’s history. Providers can’t afford to resist virtualization unless they plan on handing customers and revenue over to their ever growing competition.
“Transformation to cloud-based networking provides greater efficiencies and revenue opportunities, enabling CSPs to meet changing market demands and capitalize on expansion opportunities — that is, to reinvent their network,” Teitzel writes.
So what does a living network even look like?
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About the Author: Richard Michos is CMO for IBM’s Communications Sector (Telecommunications, Media, and Utilities).
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