Broadpeak – Sustainable strategies to optimize streaming and maximize revenue
Damien Sterkers, Video Solutions Marketing Director at Broadpeak
As the competition for audience share intensifies and high-scale live event streaming grows at an unprecedented pace, broadcasters and streaming platforms face mounting pressures to balance infrastructure investment with profitability. According to AppLogic Network’s 2025 Global Internet Phenomena Report, video traffic continues to represent the largest application category by volume, with users downloading an average 5.63GB per day and the top 10 traffic days in 2024 all coinciding with a live streaming sporting event. Live streaming is pushing networks to their limits while driving intense energy consumption requirements.
At the same time, a growing awareness around sustainability is starting to forge better practices in how video is delivered at scale. Beyond infrastructure demands, rising energy costs and increasing regulatory pressures mean that streaming platforms must adopt more efficient content delivery methods to ensure competitiveness and environmental responsibility while managing the surge in live event traffic peaks.
The good news? These challenges are far from insurmountable. Streaming providers can implement more sustainable delivery methods without compromising quality or making radical infrastructure investments. In fact, by optimizing delivery mechanisms, leading streaming services have already reported substantial reductions in network load and operational expenses. It’s time to join the dots more clearly between energy savings and cost efficiency.
More effective, more open: a fresh approach to content delivery
One of the biggest challenges for video service providers is managing the increasing demand for streaming without expanding hardware footprint, a major contributor to environmental impact. It’s here that the adoption of open content delivery networks (CDNs) comes into play. Unlike proprietary caches directly owned by individual streaming providers, open CDN enables mutualized resource sharing and harnesses existing infrastructure further down the network, typically provided by national internet service providers (ISPs). Rather than deploying and maintaining proprietary streaming servers or opting for shared caching options from major CDN providers, major platforms are beginning to leverage new open CDN strategies to harness infrastructure from local networks for improved energy efficiency, reduced hardware investment, and better video QoE for end users.
While several modern CDNaaS options can enable shared resource usage, they lack the deep network integration at a local level that is key to fully optimizing delivery, managing peak traffic, and minimizing hardware requirements. Favoring a more sophisticated, open CDN approach is a far more effective way for streaming platforms to reduce unnecessary hardware requirements and lower electricity consumption while ensuring the highest quality user experiences, particularly during large-scale live events. The result? Platforms can directly reduce their environmental impact while improving their bottom lines, allowing them to reinvest savings into content and innovation and position themselves as more responsible, efficient businesses.
High-performance streaming equals cost reduction
Software optimization plays a crucial role in sustainable video delivery, especially at a time when video service providers need to offer low-latency, 4K video streaming services, immersive content, and other bandwidth-intensive services. By deploying high-performance streaming software, streaming platforms can improve efficiency, decreasing the number of servers required to deliver content. This directly translates to less power consumption, lower greenhouse gas emissions and reduced costs.
Data from our advanced streaming software solutions has demonstrated up to a 72% improvement in throughput performance while using significantly less power than traditional servers. For streaming companies managing millions of daily active users, this efficiency translates into substantial savings on operational costs and a meaningful reduction in carbon footprint. Another key focus lies in intelligent resource allocation. Building this within software-defined architectures allows streaming platforms to dynamically adjust infrastructure needs based on demand, ensuring no excess energy is consumed. This reduces the need for large-scale hardware expansions while supporting business growth.
Multicast ABR for scalable, cost-effective live streaming
Scale is more important than ever. One of the biggest challenges in streaming today is enabling live delivery to millions of concurrent viewers. Traditional unicast delivery methods require a separate stream for each viewer, which results in massive network congestion and increased infrastructure demands. For major platforms delivering high-profile live events, these inefficiencies drive up unsustainable costs and energy use. Multicast Adaptive Bitrate (m-ABR) technology provides the perfect solution by allowing streaming companies to deliver a single stream to multiple users, drastically reducing bandwidth requirements and power consumption. This approach is particularly advantageous for platforms that stream major sporting events or concerts, as it ensures high-quality streaming while reducing the risk of buffering and network strain.
M-ABR is proven on the biggest stages. Streaming leaders such as DAZN have already adopted m-ABR to handle peak traffic events more efficiently. It has reported traffic reductions by up to 90%, an 85% drop in error rates and a 75% reduction in rebuffering times when using M-ABR with ISPs in Europe. By reducing network load and improving the quality of experience, multicast streaming represents a sustainable, cost-effective approach to consistent live event distribution.
Stream sustainably at scale and monetize without limits
Embracing more energy efficient network delivery enables businesses to focus on revenue-generating tasks and improving the viewer experience. Backed by high performance, cost effective streaming infrastructure, our customers know that they can more affordably harness advanced SSAI (Server-Side Ad Insertion), spot-level ad replacement or new shoppability technologies for more precise ad targeting, interactivity and higher ad value.
Sustainability and cost efficiency should no longer be separate concerns for streaming companies. A new breed of best-in-class streaming technologies make them inextricably linked. Streaming services that optimize their infrastructure today will gain a competitive revenue advantage. Integrating open CDN solutions, high-performance streaming software, and multicast ABR offers the opportunity to realize a greener and more lucrative future for the media and entertainment business.
