Olympeaks: The Impact of the Paris 2024 Olympics on Italy's Internet Traffic

The Paris 2024 Olympics marked a pivotal moment for RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana), with its streaming platform RaiPlay playing a central role in delivering 360 hours of live coverage. This Internet distribution was achieved by cutting-edge Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) that served the long tail (small/medium network operators) through the interconnection infrastructures of national Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) ensuring smooth access for millions of viewers.

Under the Olympeaks observatory (a Namex monitoring initiative), we’ve been able to track the profound impact of RaiPlay's coverage on Italy's Internet traffic. The platform attracted record-breaking engagement, with major events like the women’s volleyball final drawing nearly 7 million viewers and capturing an impressive 50% audience share.

Italian victories, in particular, drove social media buzz, with clips and highlights going viral on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. As the games unfolded, RaiNews.it also recorded a spike in traffic, peaking at 6.5 million visits per day and driving 25 million video views.

So what was seen in the IXPs?

NOTE: The Internet traffic graphs and examples below in this article refer to Namex, the IXP in Rome. The traffic aggregate of one of the CDNs (distributing RaiPlay) and one of the access network operators (ISP) in the IXP will be shown. CDN and ISP traffic in the examples is missing from the y-axis for reasons of data confidentiality.

Although they officially started on 26 July, on the Internet the Olympics opened on Saturday 27 July with the debut of the Italian men's volleyball team against Brazil.

Looking in detail at the CDN and ISP traffic, one can clearly see the sets played, with Italy beating Brazil three sets to one.

The Internet traffic during the Olympics is particularly interesting from a profile point of view. In Namex, we did not record any large quantities compared to the peaks seen in the past in relation to Serie A football (DAZN) and the Wednesday Prime Video exclusive Champions League matches. So what is interesting to observe is the shape of the graph rather than its quantity.

It is also interesting to note the duration of the peaks, they are usually short and related only to the event being streamed. As, in the next example, the 100 meters breaststroke on Sunday 28 July.

While there were certainly many events, here we will focus on the biggest and most interesting of them, like this next one with a double event in swimming and foil.

Back to the star of these Internet Olympics, here we turn back to volleyball. Italy against Poland on the 3 August. The four peaks you see in the red circle refer to the four sets played:

And then on 6 August, Italy vs Serbia. The Italian women’s volleyball team’s gold medal victory didn’t just triumph on the court; it also generated one of the most visible traffic peaks and interesting profiles:

Also noteworthy was the tennis matches as well as the 100 meters which had a considerable impact on the net on 4 August.

These examples of Internet traffic passing through IXPs highlight a growing shift toward digital content distribution, moving away from traditional broadcast methods.

In recent articles, I’ve explored the impact of live streaming on Italian football, showing how these spikes in traffic have become more common, and the traffic shape in events like the Sanremo Music Festival. The network is prepared to handle these waves of traffic. There is a cultural shift where watching sports on smartphones and other devices is becoming natural for millions of users.