Bringing the FIFA Club World Cup 2025™ to Millions of Screens: How PubNub Helped DAZN Transform Global Football Broadcasting
Picture this: you're hosting the world's biggest football tournament. You've got millions of people from 200+ markets all trying to watch the same matches at the same time. It's 2025, so they want to chat with friends, react to goals, and feel like they're part of something bigger. Oh, and there's zero tolerance for delays or crashes, and everything needs to be synced perfectly so there's no spoilers.
That's exactly what DAZN, the world’s leading entertainment platform, faced when they took on the challenge to stream the FIFA Club World Cup 2025™. It was like trying to fit a stadium's worth of energy into every living room on the planet.
The FIFA Club World Cup brought together 32 of the most successful clubs from every continent to compete in a single tournament spanning 30 days and 63 matches. DAZN was the exclusive global broadcast partner, delivering every match live and free to fans worldwide - a historic first for a men’s international club football tournament.
Here's how they worked with us to pull it off, and what it means for the future of sports streaming.
The Challenge: Bringing Stadium Energy to Your Living Room
DAZN wasn't just streaming matches; they wanted to create an engaging and immersive experience. Think about what happens when you watch a game at a stadium. The crowd roars, you high-five strangers, everyone's reacting to the action together. That's the magic DAZN wanted to recreate for millions of fans through their screens worldwide.
But here's the thing: traditional streaming platforms aren't built for this level of interaction. Most can handle the video just fine, but the moment you add real-time chat, live reactions, and social features for millions of concurrent users, things get complicated fast.
The technical requirements were massive:
- Millions of connected devices across every platform imaginable
- Real-time chat, game stats and social watching features, all with zero lag
- Global delivery with consistent high quality everywhere
- Absolutely zero downtime during critical matches
Building the Foundation: Why Real-Time Infrastructure Matters
You can't build this kind of experience on basic streaming technology. DAZN needed something that could handle massive scale while keeping everything feeling instant and connected. That's where PubNub's real-time infrastructure made all the difference. Here's what we delivered:
Lightning-Fast Performance: With sub-100ms latency and the ability to support anywhere from 100 to 100 million viewers, every fan saw reactions and comments appear instantly—no awkward delays, no crashes, and no slowdowns, no matter how big the moment.
Global Reach: Our edge network ensured fans in Tokyo got the same smooth experience as fans in London. Quality stayed consistent across all 200+ markets.
Multi-Platform Magic: Whether watching on a phone, laptop, or smart TV, the experience felt seamless. Reactions sync across all devices.
Actionable Insights from Real-Time Data: Every interaction (cheers, reactions, chat messages) is captured in real time, giving DAZN a powerful stream of engagement data. This makes it possible to spot the most exciting moments, automate highlight reels for social media, and better understand what fans love most about the live experience.
The Results: Breaking New Ground in Sports Broadcasting
The numbers tell an incredible story:
- Serving 212m requests per minute during peak times
- 99.999% uptime during critical live matches
- 63 matches streamed live and free globally with zero interruptions
But here's what those numbers really mean: DAZN created the world's largest virtual stadium. They proved that streaming platforms could deliver the social energy of live sports, not just the video.
The Watch Party Revolution
The real magic happened in how fans connected with each other. During penalty shootouts, you could see millions of reactions flooding in real-time. Fans were sharing the tension, celebrating goals together, and commenting on the action.
This wasn't just viewers watching a game. It was fans taking part in a global football community.
The platform handled:
- Real-time chat that stayed seamless and responsive even with millions of participants
- Live reactions that appeared instantly across all devices
- Social viewing features that let friends watch together from anywhere
- Multi-screen experiences that enhanced the action
What This Means for the Future
DAZN didn't just stream a tournament. They set a new standard for sports broadcasting. They proved that streaming platforms could create experiences that rival being there in person.
This is huge for several reasons:
For Broadcasters: You can offer premium experiences that keep viewers engaged throughout entire matches, not just highlights.
For Fans: Sports streaming is becoming more social and interactive. You're not just watching, you're participating.
For the Industry: This technology foundation opens possibilities we're only beginning to explore. Real-time polls, live statistics, and interactive features during matches.
Ready to Transform Your Platform?
The FIFA Club World Cup showed what's possible when you have the right real-time infrastructure. But this technology isn't just for massive sporting events.
Whether you're building a streaming platform, gaming experience, or any application that needs real-time interaction, you can create the same kind of engaging experiences that DAZN delivered.
Your users are ready for more than passive consumption. They want to connect, react, and be part of something bigger.
Revolutionise your platform's real-time capabilities now. Let's talk about how you can create the next generation of user experiences that bring people together, just like DAZN did for football fans worldwide.
Get started with PubNub today and build the interactive experiences your users are craving.
