Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime – they are the companies that spring to mind for most of us when asked about streaming. We’ve already seen these streaming platforms overtake traditional terrestrial and cable broadcasting for viewership. In 2024 alone, Netflix’s membership grew by five million users, bringing its worldwide paid subscriber count to 282.7 million.
But, to align the world of streaming with just these companies is to take a reductive view of the industry. When you order a takeaway on Deliveroo and follow the progress of the delivery rider on the map, that’s streaming. As is listening to an audiobook or a true crime podcast over the internet. Streaming is so much more than simply watching your favorite TV series.
Streaming has even found its way into the classroom with the rise in edtech and online classrooms. In the period from 2011 to 2021, the number of learners reached by massive open online courses (MOOCs) exploded from 300,000 to a whopping 220 million, with the market size forecasted to increase by $80 billion between 2023 and 2028. And, of course, we cannot talk about the world of streaming without mentioning gaming.
Perhaps one of the biggest streaming adopters, the eSports and games streaming market is predicted to increase from $7.6 billion in 2024 to $12.5 billion by 2029. Much of that growth is down to platforms such as Twitch, which has more than 35 million daily active users.
These are big numbers, and they require significant infrastructure to realize them. With streaming described as “probably the most profligate bandwidth consumer of the modern era” however, what infrastructure is needed to deliver increasing demands for live streaming now and in the future?
In this blog we consider the impact of the growing number of streaming services on the industry, and how changing priorities are impacting investment in live streaming infrastructure.
While streaming services had been on the rise for some time before 2020, the turn of the decade marked an era of exponential growth for the industry.
This was mostly seen in the birth of new services from large multinational players, including HBO Max, Disney+ and Paramount+. The lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was an opportunity that video streaming providers couldn’t pass up and understandably their focus during this period was about increasing market share. Adding to the list of Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms to join the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, the stage was set for the world of entertainment to welcome the ‘streaming wars’.
Fast forward to 2025, and the biggest victim is, somewhat ironically, not a streaming service. The battle for usership has encouraged these platforms to strive for such a greater level of accessibility and exclusive content, that modern day audiences are shifting their attention from traditional terrestrial and cable television to streaming completely. Leichtman Research Group’s 2024 report shows that the largest pay-TV providers in the US lost over five million subscribers in 2023, and the phrase ‘cutting the cord’ has already made its way into the cultural zeitgeist, referencing the mass cancellation of cable TV as consumers change to streaming.
These increases are being helped by new areas of growth in streaming, such as live-stream e-commerce. Retail as we know it has been steadily transforming over recent years - from the death of the high street to affiliate links on influencer’s social posts. Modern consumerism is all about see-now-want-now and it’s driving an increasingly popular trend around shopping via live video.
It’s been popular in China for some time, with livestream shopping reaching around $679 billion in China in 2023. Now the rest of the world is starting to catch up. McKinsey suggests that even industries like healthcare, engineering and finance could start to see the value of live commerce to deliver important content, and even consultations and appointment scheduling.
While the demand for streaming services may be increasing, streaming providers, and the myriad of companies that support them with services and products, are not immune to what is happening in the global market.
The pandemic was all about growth for the streaming market and increasing market share as much and as quickly as possible to keep up with demand. The subsequent cost-of-living inflation has put that pure growth focus under pressure, forcing streaming companies into a new way of thinking; re-focusing from increasing market share to being more efficient with their spending and operations.
The challenge for the industry today is how to realize efficiencies while also delivering streaming experiences that stand out. As Haris Zukanović, CTO of More Screens puts it, “there’s always the challenge of finding new, better ways to deliver video.”
Infrastructure plays a key role here. An increase in streaming naturally leads to an increase in data usage and bigger live streaming infrastructure requirements. Which cost money. Thankfully - to bastardize the words of Thomas Jefferson - not all infrastructure is made equal.
Because of the unpredictability of viewing numbers for streaming, the infrastructure that supports it needs to be flexible and able to scale up or down to meet demand.
When live events take place successful social broadcasting platforms can suddenly see viewer numbers go from a handful to hundreds or even thousands in minutes.
Streaming platforms that have been in the business for a while will have a good handle on viewer numbers to be able to prepare for spikes in traffic. But what if you’re a new streaming provider just starting out and don’t know how many users are going to turn up to your live event? With no IT team, many new entrants to the market turn to the hyperscale cloud providers with their free credits and fast scalability to provide infrastructure that supports these peaks and troughs.
The hyperscale cloud providers were particularly popular during the pandemic when streaming companies were looking for ways to scale quickly with demand. The trouble is, now that growth in viewer numbers is a little more sedate and everything is getting increasingly expensive, many streaming providers are realising that having their infrastructure provided solely by hyperscale cloud providers is not a sustainable business plan. They need to adjust their live streaming infrastructure to the current economy.
That adjustment - in our opinion - should be to invest in hybrid live streaming infrastructure. Using bare-metal dedicated servers for streaming for concurrent usage and the cloud for large spikes in users.
As our CRO Isaac Douglas discussed in an in-depth piece on finding a path out of hyperscale cloud, “while the purchase of hyperscale cloud may be simple, actually buying it in a way that works for your business isn’t. It’s very easy to end up spending far more than you should be…the cost for compute [in the cloud] can sometimes be 10x the cost of doing it in bare-metal”.
Using a baseline of dedicated servers for streaming helps companies keep costs far more predictable and manageable. While hyperscalers may sell themselves on ease of set up - all you need is a credit card - that simplicity very quickly turns to complexity and streaming companies can suddenly find themselves with a bill for live streaming infrastructure that looks nothing like they’d signed up for.
Perhaps the biggest issue with the complexity of hyperscale cloud is that the platforms provide very little help and support to unravel that complexity. In our experience, trying to get someone on the phone to better understand your monthly invoice is not easy.
In today’s economy, cost efficiency is crucial. Investing in hybrid live streaming infrastructure made up of dedicated servers that are capable of bursting into the cloud will deliver low latency, high bandwidth and scalability without losing control of costs.
To learn more about dedicated servers for streaming, visit our industry page.
