ESPN Stream Dammed Up By Busy Beavers

German and American astronauts aboard the International Space Station stopped working to watch the U.S.A./Germany FIFA World Cup match today. Their Internet connection was probably uninterrupted, unlike for most people watching while at work.

WatchESPN (
app and site) counted 1.4 million concurrent live viewers today and many more were probably denied viewing access due to congestion (or somebody in IT security woke up and shut that bandwidth mother down). After Germany scored the only goal, viewership rose to 1.7 million. Univision’s stream had no trouble (non-Spanish-speakers don’t know it exists; others know satellite is better).

Interestingly, Univision’s feed via DirecTV was more than 2 seconds ahead of ESPN’s — probably to allow for multiple satellite paths and processing in Bristol.


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