2. OVERVIEW
• The Entertainment Sports Programming Network (ESPN) is the undisputed
leader in the nation for sports broadcasting. Starting out as the brainchild of an
unemployed sports announcer, ESPN is now a multi-billion-dollar company
owned by Walt Disney Company and the Hearst Corporation
3. HISTORY
• ESPN began as a small venture by an unemployed sports announcer, Bill Rasmussen,
and his son in 1979. Together, they created a sports casting television station which
would be distinguished by its commitment to 24-hour sports broadcasting.
• ESPN received its first dose of funding from Getty Oil, which invested ten million
dollars in order to become the controlling factor in the company, which was rapidly
growing. Then in 1984, the American Broadcasting Company bought ESPN, which was
followed two years later by the company’s merging with Capital Cities
Communications. Finally, in 1995, the Walt Disney Company bought Capital Cities/ABC
and became ESPN’s parent company.
4. FEATURES
• It is thanks to the innovative spirit of the founders of ESPN that it is today’s sports channel leader. Its
flagship program, Sports Center, became one of the first sports discussion panels to present games in
order of importance, regardless of the sport. EPSN Radio launched in 1992, and then in 1993, ESPN2
was launched, then ESPNews three years later, as well as ESPN Classic following its 1997 purchase of
Classic Sports Network. ESPN International began in the early 1990s as well, in effort to take advantage
of expanding satellite markets.
• In 1998 ESPN diversified to include its own magazine, which was targeted toward males in their
twenties and ranked second behind Sports Illustrated in number of advertising pages within a year of
its launch. In that same year, ESPN started using “Skycam” for their broadcasts of the NHL, which was
later implemented in their airing of baseball, basketball, and football games. Later, in 2003, ESPN
added ESPN HD, a high-definition view of the nation’s favorite games and competitions.
5. SYSTEM
• ESPN’s online presence is run primarily on Linux and Apache servers, which are
hosted by Disney Interactive Group, DIG.com. Ranked 17th in the web’s top
visited sites on Alexa.com, the ESPN website experiences the most traffic during
the end of year bowl games, NBA playoffs, and other key sports seasons.
• ESPN uses satellites from RCA American to send its TV signals to viewers
nationwide, thanks to connections with its parent company, the Walt Disney
Company.
6. SUMMARY
• ESPN is the worldwide leader of sports. Beginning as a small company started by
Bill Rasmussen, it grew to become the largest sports news television station and
the 17th most viewed website in the U.S. Now it is the station, the channel, and
the site that the nation turns to for all things sports
Sources
Amazon.com. “Espn.go.com Site Info.” Alexa.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/espn.go.com (accessed March 1, 2017).
American Public Media. “ESPN’s corporate history.” Marketplace.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/espns-corporate-history (accessed March 1, 2017).
“ESPN, Inc..” Funding Universe.
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/ESPN-Inc-company-History.html (accessed March 1, 2017).
“espn.go.com.” Site-perf.com.
http://site-perf.com/cgi-bin/show.cgi?id=KwTnpiE6Sno (accessed March 1, 2017).
“ESPN’s 30th Anniversary – 30 ESPN Firsts & Innovations.” ESPN MediaZone.
http://www.espnmediazone.com/press_kits/ESPN30/ESPN30_Production_FirstsA.html (accessed March 1, 2017).
7. HOW MANY REQUESTS FROM USERS DOES ESPN RECEIVE EACH SECOND? DO YOU THINK
THIS IS A CONSISTENT PATTERN OR DOES IT HAVE PEAKS AND VALLEYS? WHEN DOES IT
PEAK?
• They serve +10 000 requests per second. They scale to the heavy reliance on the
webpage caching. They get over 10 000 request every second and this goes on
for hours. It’s relentless. They have peaks when there are events.
8. WHY DOES ESPN STORE PERSONAL INFORMATION AND PREFERENCES ON ITS DATABASES
AND HOW DOES THIS PERSONAL INFORMATION COMPLICATE THE ABILITY OF ESPN TO
RESPOND TO REQUESTS FROM USERS? WHY CAN’T ESPN JUST USE WEB PAGE CACHING TO
HANDLE THE LOADS?
• They need to store 200 Gigabyte of data, they also need to leverage the same
system for the mobile users, soccernet and deportes. They want to carry forward
the same preference you’ve made on the pc, to go to your mobile phone and so
on.
9. HOW MUCH INFORMATION ON USERS DOES ESPN STORE? WHY DOES THIS POSE A
CHALLENGE FOR ESPN? CAN’T THEY JUST USE A STANDARD 1 TERABYTE HARD DRIVE FROM
A PC? WHY CAN’T THEY USE A SINGLE PC?
• +/- 5 kilobyte per users. They need to store 200 gigabytes of data. This doesn’t fit into 100
JVM’s. They need much more space for this. They need a bigger database for all this data.
10. WHAT PLATFORMS DO ESPN CUSTOMERS USE WHEN ACCESS THEIR WEB SITES, AND HOW
DOES THIS FURTHER COMPLICATE ESPN’S PROCESSING PICTURE?
• They use mobile phones, soccesnet and deportes. They need to carry their
preferences on these platforms too.
What are the key components in ESPN’s solution? Describe the function of each.
• It all started with a relational database, They’ve introduced two new exotic
components, the grid and the composer. The grid searches out your extreme scale, it’s
a representation of everything in that personal DB.
11. WHY IS SCALABILITY SO IMPORTANT TO ESPN?
• They need to go fast. From the moment a request comes in to the moment it goes out,
they need to have single digit mill second response time. They have each 10 servers with
32 gigs of RAM and they only use 20, they loaded 12 million users and they had 40% to
grow. They threw 15 000 request per second, all 10 of the servers stayed below 5%.
