Rugby World Cup sets streaming records

Spark Sport says it served up over six million hours of streaming video during the Rugby World Cup which finished last weekend.

The most watched game was the All Blacks—Ireland quarter final with 212,000 live and on-demand streams. In many cases more than one person watched the stream. The England—Australia quarter final was the second most viewed game with 191,000 streams.

Although there were fewer streams, the busiest game from a network perspective was the Wales—France quarter final. Both Spark and Chorus noted data traffic records on their networks. Spark's traffic peaked at 1.2 Tbps, that's 40 percent higher than any previous Sunday night. Chorus clocked 2.6 Tbps on its network.

Free to air kicked in

Quarter final matches were the last games to air exclusively on Spark Sport. Semi-finals, the final and the bronze medal game all aired on free to air television.

By the end of the tournament there were more than 200,000 subscriptions to the service. Not all were paid subscriptions, many were part of a company promotion.

Spark says as many as 40 percent of users watched some content while on the move.

The sport app was available across 11 different device types and on average consumers watched the Rugby on at least two devices.

Around 20 percent of customers needed help from Spark at some point during the tornament. Around two thirds of the contact queries were in the first ten days. Spark Sport head Jeff Latch said he was thrilled the majority of users had a positive experience on the streaming platform.

“While we acknowledge that not every New Zealander had the perfect experience on Spark Sport, we believe that the efforts that we made to get each customer’s individual in-home issue resolved went above and beyond what you would normally expect from a streaming provider,” he said.

“Hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders have now experienced the choice and flexibility that comes with live sports streaming – and are well set up to stream again in future.”

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