Streaming operators shift to end-to-end redundancy to prevent live event failures

Live events turn streaming infrastructure into a high-stakes audit of a company’s operational maturity. As billions are spent on exclusive sports rights, a single failed manifest or DRM license rejection carries immediate financial penalties in the form of ad make-goods and subscriber churn. The shift toward end-to-end redundancy signals that the industry is moving beyond 'best effort' internet delivery toward a broadcast-grade reliability model. Strategists must now treat delivery resilience as a core component of the rights-acquisition business case, as platform stability becomes synonymous with brand credibility in a fragmented market. Watch for a rise in multi-vendor telemetric standards to bridge gaps between internal stacks and third-party delivery partners.

The industry's focus on end-to-end reliability follows high-profile technical disruptions that have underscored the fragility of live streaming at scale. In November 2024, Netflix faced widespread buffering and freezing issues during its Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul boxing match, which reached a peak of 65 million concurrent viewers. Per Bloomberg, the event's technical glitches—which also affected internal audio systems—reignited industry discussions regarding the limitations of on-demand optimized infrastructures like Netflix’s OpenConnect when subjected to sudden, massive traffic spikes. To prevent similar issues for its 2024 NFL Christmas Day games, Netflix coordinated directly with global ISPs to stress-test capacity limits and delegated game production to CBS Sports, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Simultaneously, competitors have reported significant audience shifts that increase the pressure on infrastructure. According to a May 2025 Nielsen report, streaming viewership officially surpassed broadcast and cable combined for the first time, reaching a 44.8% share of total TV usage. This growth is being met with a shift toward hybrid-cloud and ASIC-based encoding strategies to improve efficiency. For example, during NAB 2025, vendors highlighted hybrid-cloud models that use on-premises hardware for predictable base loads and cloud bursting for peak events. This move toward specialized hardware like ASICs, which Net Insight suggests can handle 500 hours of video per minute more efficiently than traditional CPUs, is becoming the baseline for services managing the 57% of executives who believe their current business models require radical technical overhauls by 2030.