Thoughts on large scale streaming bandwidth
Posted by eXonyte at 1:02 PM
The networking nerd in me is fascinated by the logistics behind large live streaming events, and the annual NFL Super Bowl is one of the largest regularly scheduled events to watch. Last year, the primary streaming outlet hosted some 8.5 million users alone. This year, the Fox owned Tubi service gets a chance to prove its streaming chops. If the growth trend continues, 2025 may be the first year that the primary stream cracks 10 million average viewers, with some outlets projecting potentially 12.5 million viewers. So, how much bandwidth will that need?
Traditionally, the Super Bowl is streamed at 720p or 1080p, and usually at 30 fps. A few years ago we were treated to a 1080p 60 fps stream through the NFL app. Last year was 1080p30 upscaled to 4K, also known as 2160p, and it looks like Fox will be pushing the same through Tubi this year. Being as Tubi's entire business plan is live TV streaming and they are backed by the huge Fox corporation, hopefully they can maintain the bandwidth necessary to pull this off. They will absolutely be trying to avoid the abysmal performance that Netflix gave us for the Tyson/Paul fight back in November.
25 megabits per second (mbps). That is a generally recommended bitrate for a good quality 4K stream. That really isn't much to speak of in this time where a modern internet connection is measured in hundreds or even thousands of mbps. However, when talking about a large scale streaming event like this, the numbers become quickly almost incomprehensible. So, lets use a bit of simple math based on what we know. You can skip the next section if numbers make your brain hurt!
Let's assume that we're going to see those 10 million streams. Now, not everyone has a 4K TV, but the estimated market penetration in the US is 72% as of 2024. If we run with that, then we will can assume that 7.2 million of those streams will be in 4K at 25 mbps, while the remaining 2.8 million will be in 1080p at 5 mbps. Now the math becomes very simple: (7.2 million viewers x 25 mbps) + (2.8 million viewers x 5 mbps) = 194,000,000 mbps total bitrate. You could also say that this is 192 petabits per second. How fast is this, exactly? In 2024 some Japanese researchers managed a speed record of 403 terabits per second. This is still over 470 times slower than the total that we are unofficially projecting for this Super Bowl stream. The fastest commercially available network connection that I could find runs at 400 gbps, which is some 485,000 times slower. I think you get the point: it's a lot.
In summary, it could take somewhere around 194,000,000 mbps or more to push the Super Bowl stream to some 10,000,000 viewers. There is no single system in existence that can handle this, so they will be relying heavily on their Content Distribution Networks. A CDN is a huge collection of servers around the world that is used as a relay to spread the load for any kind of large digital distribution, whether that be a major live stream or the latest Call of Duty update. We shall soon see if they have allocated enough hardware and bandwidth to handle the load. Good luck to them.