The 2026 FIFA World Cup is the most demanding live streaming stress test ever conducted on the global internet. The United States' opening match against Paraguay became the most-watched football match ever broadcast in the country, with 27.5 million viewers.
But viewership records are only half the story. Unlike traditional broadcasting, streaming platforms create individual viewing sessions for every user, introducing multiple potential points of failure across app launches, authentication, CDN routing, ISP connectivity, device software, video players, and advertising systems. Around 62% of streaming incidents occurred between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. local time aligning precisely with prime-time World Cup broadcasts.
This is the operational reality that Orange Wholesale's CDN & Edge teams have been preparing for, and living through, in real time. In this fireside chat, Brenton Ough and Cédric Hardouin pull back the curtain on what it takes to deliver the world's biggest event at scale: the months of preparation, architecture decisions proved under pressure, the surprises no one saw coming, and the lessons that will reshape how the industry approaches mega-events.