Akamai Delivers 2010 World Cup Internet Coverage for Two Dozen Broadcasters Into 65 Countries Worldwide

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Akamai Technologies (Nasdaq: AKAM), the leading provider of cloud optimization services, today announced that it successfully delivered live and on-demand Web content and streaming for 24 global broadcasters into 65 countries during the month-long World Cup championships.  Customers including ESPN, Prisacom, Televisa, TV2 and TV4 leveraged Akamai's globally distributed platform during the 31-day event to deliver 64 matches, as well as opening and closing ceremonies.

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Customers relied on a host of Akamai solutions including Akamai's HD Network for live and on-demand streaming, delivery to mobile devices including the iPhone® and iPad™ devices, and Akamai Media Analytics for detailed information regarding usage of their content.  Akamai's massively scalable network and adaptive streaming technology provided high-quality experiences for viewers around the globe on PCs and mobile devices.

Customer Highlights Include:

• On ESPN3.com, matches were viewed by 7.4 million unique viewers
• ESPN.com's front page, which prominently featured World Cup news, video and scores, saw 304 million visits and 663 million page views
• Swiss IPTV portal wilmaa.com saw its traffic more than double during peak times and supported more than 100,000 additional viewers during the event
• sf.tv provided live and on-demand streams of all matches in Switzerland and at peak times registered up to 35,000 concurrent streams, a sf.tv streaming record

At times, global interest in this year's World Cup was over 2X higher than the 2006 event, as demonstrated by Akamai's Net Usage Index for News, which registered a peak of more than 20 million visitors per minute on June 24th, compared to a peak of 8 million visitors per minute during the 2006 World Cup.  Akamai's World Cup Index, which tracked real-time traffic to the 24 global broadcasters for which Akamai delivered traffic, also registered its highest peak on June 24th at noon EDT at the end of the Italy vs. Slovenia match.

"It was a thrill to work with so many of our customers to bring an HD experience to more World Cup fans around the globe," said Robert Hughes, Executive Vice President of Global Sales, Services and Marketing at Akamai.  "The delivery of this type of event is a testament to our delivery model and distributed approach and to our team of experts on large online events.  The Akamai HD Network was a key factor in the success of the event, as the majority of our customers chose to deliver across our unique HTTP delivery platform.  

For twelve years, Akamai has been supporting the delivery of high profile events to large online audiences, and the experience we've gained as a company has made Akamai's support and services team among the foremost experts on large online event delivery."

About Akamai

Akamai® provides market-leading, cloud-based services for optimizing Web and mobile content and applications, online HD video, and secure e-commerce. Combining highly-distributed, energy-efficient computing with intelligent software, Akamai's global platform is transforming the cloud into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, transact and collaborate. To learn how the world's leading enterprises are optimizing their business in the cloud, please visit www.akamai.com and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.