List of Live Streaming Events and Software Downloads ISPs are Closely Watching
I’ve recently spoken with and presented to more than two dozen last-mile providers, and here’s a list of live streaming events and software downloads they are closely monitoring from a capacity planning standpoint. We’ve recently gotten viewership stats from live events across YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix, so it’s been interesting for me to hear from ISPs and streamers on how they are using recent telemetry data for capacity planning. If you think I missed a potential big traffic event from the list (at least 10M+ AMA), please add it to the comments section.
- YouTube NFL Exclusive, (Sept 5, 19.7M AMA)
- Amazon Prime Video TNF Kickoff, (Sept 11, 17.7M AMA)
- Netflix Canelo vs. Crawford boxing event (Sept 13, 36.6M AMA)
- Battlefield 6 launch (Oct 10)
- Fortnite season, Chapter 6 Season 5 (Nov 1)
- Call of Duty Black Ops 7 launch (Nov 14)
- Netflix Jake Paul vs. Gervonta Davis boxing event (Nov 14)
- ESPN’s WWE premium live events (PLEs), the first one was Sept. 20 (4x per year)
- Netflix’s two NFL games on Christmas (Dec 25)
- YouTube NFL Sunday Ticket (all games until January, final date TBD)
- Amazon Prime Video TNF (all games until Dec. 27)
- NBA Season Long: Monday (Peacock), Tuesday (NBC/Peacock), Wednesday (ESPN), Thursday and Friday (Prime Video), Saturday (ABC/ESPN/Prime Video), Sunday (ABC/ESPN/Prime Video)
- NHL migrating to DAZN for 2025-2026 season (NHL TV no longer doing distribution, so traffic will look different now coming from DAZN)
- Amazon Prime Video NFL Wild Card playoff game (Jan 10 or 11)
- UFC on Paramount+ (2026, 46 events in the year, 13 are major)
One thing to note when comparing live events to previous years is the increasing number of large-scale live events that are now global. Some streamers have the rights to distribute events worldwide, as seen with Netflix’s NFL games on Christmas and YouTube’s coverage of the NFL game from Brazil.