Netflix Traffic Is Down 25% Thanks to the Olymipcs
Forget Mad Men reruns. The individual mixed dressage events are on tonight!
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As predicted by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings last week, interest in the London Olympic Games seems to be sapping away significant viewership on his streaming service.
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A study issued Wednesday by Procera Networks, which sells packet sniffing gear to internet service providers — research first reported Wednesday by entertainment trade publication Variety – revealed that Netflix streaming traffic was down 25 percent on Sunday from normal levels.
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Usage stayed normal in Canada, Procera also found.
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“This matches expectations, as the U.S. is much more involved in the Olympics than Canada, and with the peak levels that we mentioned earlier for Olympics streaming, something had to give, and in this case it was Netflix,” wrote Cam Cullen, the Boston-based VP of global marketing for Procera.
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Of course, media companies vested in coverage of the Olympics on digital platforms, such as Comcast/NBCUniversal and Yahoo, 9s YHOO) are seeing big usage spikes, Procera adds.
“In the U.S., several networks peaked as high as 34 percent of overall bandwidth and increased volume by over 100 percent over the initial two days of events,” Cullen wrote.
Meanwhile, in the U.K., usage on BBC iPlayer was up 100 percent on all platforms Sunday during coverage of soccer events.
