ITV's interactive "watch and chat" service ITV Live letting fans keep up with the opening match of the World Cup online ran into problems today, with some unable to log on .
That does not bode well for Saturday's match between England and the USA, which is live on ITV1 at 7.30pm – though the fact that fewer people will be watching at work might reduce the numbers trying to follow the action online rather than on TV.
The number of online viewers watching ITV.com's live streaming for today's 1-1 draw between South Africa and Mexico grew rapidly to 90,000, picking up quickly soon after half time, ITV said.
However, ITV Live ran into problems. The initiative allows viewers with laptops to customise the ITV.com live stream with a range of interactive elements from a chat service – which can link to Facebook – to polls, quizzes and statistics on teams and players.
"We had a problem with our CDN [content distribution network] which was preventing new members joining the stream," a company spokeswoman said. "It was an issue since half time in the game."
ITV1 will also have live coverage of England v Algeria next Friday, 18 June, another 7.30pm kick-off. England's third and final qualifying game, against Slovenia, is on BBC1 at 3pm on Wednesday 23 June.
ITV said that while an initial 90,000 fans had been able to log on to the stream at its itv.com site, others who tried to join subsequently were locked out due to problems with its CDN company, which smooths out demand by storing copies of the data around the internet, closer to the users.
An ITV spokeswoman said that people who tried to access the live stream via the channel's dedicated World Cup site would find themselves unable to join, but that joining through the streaming service for ITV1, which was showing the match live, should have been able to see it.
ITV is simulcasting matches that it shows live on TV, web and through an iPhone app.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/11/itv-world-cup-web-stream