Fastly examines the shadow audience around online sports

Fastly's sports traffic analysis treats piracy and bot activity as part of the same operational reality: major events create concentrated demand, and not all of that demand is legitimate. The useful takeaway for CDN and streaming teams is that scale alone is not enough; the platform also has to understand traffic intent.

That matters because unauthorized restreams, credential attacks, and automated abuse can all ride the same event-driven spikes as real fans. The edge is one of the few places where those decisions can be made early enough to protect both viewer experience and origin capacity.

Source: Online Sports’ Shadow Audience