Azure helped NBC to stream 2.71 billion minutes of Olympic coverage with zero downtime

Microsoft Azure is the cloud-based live encoding, hosting and streaming platform for the Olympics coverage by NBC. A team of Microsoft Azure engineers have been hard at work preparing for the Olympics Games to bring the Games to millions across all devices, including connected TVs for the first time. Across NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app, there was a record 3.3 billion total streaming minutes (live + full event replays + highlights).

Eric Black, CTO, digital, NBC Sports Group, said, “Our partnership with Microsoft Azure helped us extend our reach to more people and more devices via cloud streaming than ever before.”

Microsoft today highlighted that they have achieved their goal to deliver more channels and content in real time across all devices in a high-definition, glitch-free livestream experience. Also, they did it with zero downtime in all 19 days of the event as Olympics history was made.

Azure’s records for the Rio Olympics games include:

• A 1080p profile for all streamed channels (up from 720p during Sochi) as viewers expect a “TV-like” experience on any device.
• Over 4,500 hours of content made available.
• Over 50 simultaneous Olympics events – a 40 percent increase compared with the Sochi Winter Games.
• Over 100 live channels continuously available for the Games, nearly double the number of available channels for Sochi.