How Airtel Kept IPL 2026 Cricket Streams Smooth for Millions of Viewers

At a glance

During the 2026 Indian Premier League (IPL) season, Airtel ran a video delivery system with Google Cloud. It sent hundreds of petabytes of data across 74 matches and handled hundreds of billions of requests during the final. The article explains how the system stayed stable even when huge numbers of viewers watched at once.

Key points

1. 1

   Requests were handled at edge servers (devices that send video quickly from locations near users) close to viewers.

2. 2

   99.9% of total traffic was handled at local edges inside India.

3. 3

   The cache hit rate (the share of times video was pulled directly from stored copies on the server) exceeded 98%.

4. 4

   Real-time monitoring (constantly watching system status) from before the matches through match day helped find problems early.

Why it matters

Large sports broadcasts are watched by huge numbers of people at the same time, so a single buffering delay can be a major annoyance. This case shows how that problem was prevented.