How 100M+ stream the Super Bowl (Hint: it's smart System Design)
I always enjoy hosting for a big game (mostly cricket in my case, but I've gotten into American football more and more every year :). But no matter the sport, nothing kills the vibe of a watch party like a buffering stream.
Imagine that scenario during the Super Bowl, with over 100 million people watching worldwide. The stakes are sky-high—not just for the players on the field but also for the engineers behind the scenes, laboring to ensure a flawless live streaming experience.
This interesting convergence of sports and technology illustrates that the Super Bowl is both a test of athletic prowess and a display of technological brilliance. Today I want to break down the ingenious System Design strategies that enable millions around the world to tune in reliably.
Super Bowl LIX
On February 9, 2025, the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans hosted the 59th edition of this iconic cultural event. The Kansas City Chiefs battled the Philadelphia Eagles for the Championship title (Philly ended up winning 40-24, much to the joy of many fans who had grown tired of KC's reign of dominance).
The Super Bowl consistently ranks as one of the most-watched television events in the world. Super Bowl LVIII (2024) alone drew 123.7 million viewers globally.
More than just a game, the Super Bowl is a global spectacle that brings millions together to celebrate sports and culture. Without the ability to watch remotely, this event would lose its global hype. And as the CEO of video streaming technology company Phenix recently noted, it would also make so much of the modern sports viewing experience impossible.
"As a live event buffers or is over one minute behind what is actually happening on the field, things like real-time betting, second-screen viewing, peer interactions, and live fan engagements cannot happen. These features are the future of sports viewing and sports culture. The playing field (pun intended) is uneven and each season we deny fans what they’re looking for, frustration grows and networks miss out on massive opportunities. Thankfully the technology exists to remove this barrier, we just have to stop being afraid to use it.”
That’s where the massive technical challenge lies: live streaming the Super Bowl seamlessly and at massive scale across varied geographies, networks, and devices. Streaming the event requires a System Design capable of handling traffic surges, maintaining minimum latency, and ensuring continuous service—an engineering feat as thrilling as the game itself.
To grasp the impact of overcoming these challenges, we can examine past events where streaming issues pushed technology to its limits. By applying insights from these experiences, we can better understand how to ensure seamless streaming events.
What Do Past Events Teach Us?
Massive live streaming events like the Super Bowl demand a resilient System Design, yet history shows that even leading platforms have encountered challenges they anticipated but weren’t fully prepared for. Analyzing past incidents can uncover key lessons to improve streaming reliability for future events. Let’s do a quick overview of some of the events that experienced difficulties during their live streams:
