After a turbulent 2020, people around the world have been looking forward to something … anything ... to take their minds off the craziness and enjoy even a sliver of normalcy. Super Bowl 2021 was just the thing. 

Except it wasn’t. 

Sure, Tampa fans were thrilled for the win, but Kansas City fans were left confused. I mean, let’s be honest, their team didn’t even show up! As a whole, 96.4 million viewers were let down. In fact, Super Bowl 2021 turned out to be the lowest-rated Super Bowl since the Chicago Bears went up against the Indianapolis Colts in 2007.

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The Chiefs May Have Tanked, But DNS Never Fumbled the Ball

Super Bowl streaming, however, increased significantly. CBS reported an average of 5.7 million viewers per minute. And that’s where DNS ultimately was the MVP of this year’s Super Bowl. Ratings aside, viewers would’ve been in an uproar if there had been an outage.

It wasn’t just viewer satisfaction that was on the line, though. 

Commercials have long since been a huge part of the Super Bowl. And a whopping $545 million in advertising dollars was spent by companies wanting to showcase their wares during the big game. But did all that spending live up to the hype? Yes and no. The overall consensus was there were some wildly entertaining Super Bowl 2021 commercials and some that fell as flat as Kansas City. 

On top of the game itself and the commercials, there were online Super Bowl parties, large amounts of social media activity before, during, and after the game, gambling, online food orders—let’s just say the Super Bowl was a very busy day for the internet.

For instance, the DNS Made Easy and Constellix network experienced a 23% spike in DNS queries during this year’s Super Bowl due to the large brands that depend on our services. 

With so much on the line—from advertising investments to streaming services needing to meet the demands of large online viewerships—all the necessary precautions were taken to ensure the Constellix and DNS Made Easy network was prepared for the game.

The same can’t be said for brands on other networks. 

While CBS may have seen a large increase in streaming for the Super Bowl, it wasn’t a seamless process. Many viewers trying to tune in during the early part of the first quarter were unable to log in to CBS’s All-Access to stream the game. Even if they weren’t really missing much, imagine how well that went over! Well, I was one of them, so I can tell you. It was infuriating. I canceled my free trial on the spot.

Several gambling sites also experienced issues due to the massive Super Bowl-driven traffic spikes. I suppose that could’ve been a good thing for anyone who was going to bet on the Chiefs but gave up before bets were “back on”—but it was definitely not a good thing for sports gambling platforms.

With the Right DNS Strategy, You’ll Never Let Your “Fans” Down

The thing is, all of these issues could have been avoided with redundancy, Multi-CDN, or proactive monitoring solutions like our Real-Time Anomaly Detection (RTTAD) service. With how reliant we’ve become on online services and platforms, brands need a good offense and a good defense. Competition is fierce and attention spans are short!

When it comes to DNS, no fumbles are allowed. Brands count on us to keep them up and running and that’s exactly what we do. We don’t miss field goals. We don’t miss a first down. We don’t get sacked. We score. Period.

Sound too good to be true? It isn’t! We’re the only DNS provider with a 10-year history of 100% uptime and top speeds—not to mention we offer unique, proprietary DNS services you won’t find anywhere else in the industry. 

Book a personalized demo and see for yourself!