Delivering a Global Livestream for YouVersion’s “Beyond a Billion” Event
In 2025, we partnered with Sardius Media to support the global livestream of YouVersion’s “Beyond a Billion” celebration, marking one billion downloads of the Bible App. By combining Sardius’s broadcast infrastructure with our delivery optimization technology, the event’s global audience enjoyed a seamless, high-quality stream.
Key outcomes
Reliable global delivery during high-concurrency live event
Consistent playback quality across regions
Real-time visibility into performance and audience experience
Additional resilience during peak traffic conditions
About Sardius Media
Sardius Media is a broadcasting technology company delivering enterprise-grade live and on-demand video worldwide.
Working with mission-driven organizations, churches, nonprofits, and broadcasters, Sardius combines AWS-based encoding, global CDN infrastructure, and managed broadcast services to deliver large-scale events to global audiences.
The challenge
The “Beyond a Billion” livestream was expected to attract a large global audience, creating unpredictable traffic spikes and high levels of concurrent viewers. Key challenges included:
Managing sudden surges in global viewership
Maintaining consistent video quality across regions
Avoiding congestion across CDN infrastructure
Ensuring a seamless viewing experience for a high-profile live event
The solution
Sardius Media designed a comprehensive delivery architecture built on its EMLA encoding pipeline and AWS infrastructure. System73 enhanced this setup by integrating Edge Intelligence, which continuously analyzes network conditions and reroutes traffic to avoid congestion.
Alongside this, Edge Analytics provided real-time visibility into:
This combined approach ensured stable performance and high-quality delivery throughout the event.
Bitrate performance across regions
Traffic offload levels
Viewer QoE
Results
The “Beyond a Billion” livestream successfully delivered a seamless viewing experience to a global audience, even during peak demand.
Smooth, high-quality streaming with no noticeable lag
Stable playback across regions during traffic spikes
Strong resilience during high-concurrency moments
Up to 50–70% CDN traffic offload during peak periods
More than 90% of viewers reaching the highest available bitrate
This collaboration demonstrates how combining robust broadcast infrastructure with intelligent delivery optimization enables reliable streaming at global scale.
