BT Broadband Saw Major UK Surge in Streaming Traffic for England v Norway
The latest internet traffic data from UK ISP BT (EE) has revealed that Saturday night’s quarter-final FIFA World Cup 2026 football match between England and Norway triggered another “major surge in streaming traffic” across BT’s broadband network, despite it taking place well outside of normal working hours.
At 12.30am, peak traffic on the ITVX streaming app was 1,915% higher than BT would typically see at the same time on an average Saturday night into Sunday morning, as viewers stayed up to follow the closing stages of the match.
The match also drove an unusually sustained period of demand. Peak ITVX traffic between 10pm and 12.46am was 328% higher than the equivalent peak during an average week, showing the considerable impact of England’s latest late-night fixture on viewing habits.
Advertisement
People watching in Croydon recorded the highest volume of ITVX broadband traffic, followed by Walthamstow and Leighton Buzzard. “The figures underline the extraordinary pull of England at a major tournament, with hundreds of thousands of households prepared to stay awake well beyond midnight to watch the drama unfold live,” said a BT spokesperson.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« BBC Boss Hints Channel 4 TV Content May Come to iPlayer Streaming Service
Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message and display names can be almost anything you like (provided they do not contain offensive language or impersonate a real person's legal name). By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your entries for comment content, display name, IP and email in our database, for as long as the post remains live.
Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.