Legal, semi-legal and pirate streaming websites will set record levels of traffic during the next few weeks during FIFA World Cup 2014 Brasil football.
According to the recently published annual Visual Networking Index (VNI) from Cisco, millions of people are expected to view games and/or highlights via the internet. Video streaming and IP broadcast of the World Cup is anticipated to generate 4.3 exabytes of IP traffic.
A survey recently conducted by streaming web TV service TV Player in the UK, reveals that 81% of its respondents will be watching as many live football matches as possible this year. 68% said that they will watch the games at home, with only 18% preferring to watch the matches in the pub. 66% of respondents will be looking to keep up-to-date on the games through various websites and 28% via social media.
Watching live football on TV Player were the most popular activity in May including the UEFA Champions League Final, the FA Cup Final Live as well as the World Championship Snooker, which shows the exponential demand for watching live sport on TV across desktop, mobile and tablet.
“2014 will see a rise in consumers watching the biggest football event of the year live across multiple devices,” said Marie Ellis, Marketing Manager, TVPlayer.
“With the games broadcast throughout the day as well as in the early hours in the morning, TVPlayer offers football fans the chance to view live matches whether they are at work or even at home in bed.”
TV Player streams all live terrestrial TV channels via the web and via mobile apps to viewers in the UK. These include BBC and ITV who hold the rights to the World Cup games. Across Europe, live streaming apps from official World Cup broadcasters are also set to distribute the live games to viewers on PCs and mobile devices. These include ARD and ZDF in Germany and NOS of The Netherlands.
All these official streaming services and apps are legal and are usually geo-blocked. However, we will undoubtably see services such as Canada-based UnoTelly, who provide SmartDNS and VPN geo-restriction removal solutions.
“UnoTelly will let people stream all FIFA WC Games for absolutely free, regardless of where they live or if they are UnoTelly subscribers,” wrote marketing representative Kostas.
“In more detail, we are going to offer free access to several streaming stations (BBC, ITV, CBC, ZDF, and more) which will broadcast the FIFA World Cup games Live. Furthermore, we will provide a live feed to inform users about everyday’s matches schedule and where they can watch them.”
Services such as UnoTelly’s have blossomed, allowing people the access services such as Hulu Plus, HBO Go and Netflix in countries where such premium on-demand portals are not (yet) available. With the upcoming football event, new record are set to be broken.
