--- title: Delivering Messages at the scale of the World Cup description: Firebase Cloud Messaging engineers detail how they handled extreme traffic spikes during the 2022 World Cup Final, delivering over 115 billion notifications to... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/delivering-messages-at-the-scale-of-the-world-cup-oxyzv13kv twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Delivering Messages at the scale of the World Cup | daily.dev og:description: Firebase Cloud Messaging engineers detail how they handled extreme traffic spikes during the 2022 World Cup Final, delivering over 115 billion notifications to... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/delivering-messages-at-the-scale-of-the-world-cup-oxyzv13kv og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/oXYzv13Kv.png og:image:alt: Delivering Messages at the scale of the World Cup og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Delivering Messages at the scale of the World Cup **[Firebase](https://daily.dev/sources/firebase-blog)** · 11 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Firebase Cloud Messaging engineers detail how they handled extreme traffic spikes during the 2022 World Cup Final, delivering over 115 billion notifications to more than 400 million users, with peaks of 46M QPS from an 18M baseline. The piece covers traffic prediction using historical event data, strategic capacity provisioning, cold potato routing, load balancer configuration, server-side throttling, quota management, vertical versus horizontal cluster scaling, and the importance of realistic load testing on isolated (non-production) infrastructure ahead of major spike events. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How many notifications did Firebase Cloud Messaging deliver during the 2022 World Cup final and what was the peak QPS? Firebase Cloud Messaging delivered over 115 billion notifications to more than 400 million users during the 2022 Qatar World Cup. During the Argentina versus France final, traffic spiked to a peak of 46 million queries per second (QPS), up from an average baseline of 18 million QPS, occurring within a matter of seconds. _Engineers designing for spiky traffic events can find real-world scaling benchmarks like this on daily.dev._ ### What is cold potato routing and how does it help with infrastructure scaling for high-traffic events? Cold potato routing is the practice of provisioning infrastructure as close as possible to both the source and destination of traffic, rather than handing traffic off to another network early, so requests travel in and out of a system more quickly while keeping control over quality of service and latency. It contrasts with hot potato routing, which minimizes a provider's own network costs. _Teams planning capacity for traffic spikes can track infrastructure patterns like this on daily.dev._ ### Should I run load tests against production infrastructure to validate scaling for a high-traffic event? No, load tests should never run against production infrastructure because they risk harming regular traffic and causing other problems. Firebase Cloud Messaging does not support load tests against its own servers for this reason, and instead recommends provisioning new, separate infrastructure specifically for load testing ahead of major events like the World Cup. _Developers preparing load tests for critical launches can find infrastructure practices like this on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [How the 2026 World Cup affected Internet traffic](https://daily.dev/posts/how-the-2026-world-cup-affected-internet-traffic-ti3jxrsaa) · Cloudflare · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How Neuron Systems Served 2.3 Million Fans Across 104 World Cup Matches on Confluent](https://daily.dev/posts/how-neuron-systems-served-2-3-million-fans-across-104-world-cup-matches-on-confluent-ltlxykc2t) · Confluent Blog · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Streaming the FIFA World Cup with TelevisaUnivision](https://daily.dev/posts/streaming-the-fifa-world-cup-with-televisaunivision-sygec1048) · Google Cloud · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [When 80,000 fans log on at once: The 2026 World Cup’s unique cybersecurity issues](https://daily.dev/posts/when-80-000-fans-log-on-at-once-the-2026-world-cup-s-unique-cybersecurity-issues-m0ovcvqxr) · CSO Online · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [When Notifications Became Data Trucks: A Real-World Crash Story from Firebase FCM](https://daily.dev/posts/when-notifications-became-data-trucks-a-real-world-crash-story-from-firebase-fcm-nh9ixqylv) · ProAndroidDev · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#load-testing](https://daily.dev/tags/load-testing) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/delivering-messages-at-the-scale-of-the-world-cup-oxyzv13kv) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Delivering Messages at the scale of the World Cup","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/delivering-messages-at-the-scale-of-the-world-cup-oxyzv13kv","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/delivering-messages-at-the-scale-of-the-world-cup-oxyzv13kv"},"datePublished":"2026-08-23T12:18:30.847Z","dateModified":"2026-08-23T12:28:42.963Z","description":"Firebase Cloud Messaging engineers detail how they handled extreme traffic spikes during the 2022 World Cup Final, delivering over 115 billion notifications to...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/8d52d31e66640d8b4df069bb79726235?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/8d52d31e66640d8b4df069bb79726235?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Firebase","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Firebase","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--i395oqZH--/f_auto,q_auto/v1787487448/logos/firebase-blog?_a=BAMAMicg0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/firebase-blog"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/delivering-messages-at-the-scale-of-the-world-cup-oxyzv13kv","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"load-testing","timeRequired":"PT11M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Firebase","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/firebase-blog"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Delivering Messages at the scale of the World Cup"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/delivering-messages-at-the-scale-of-the-world-cup-oxyzv13kv#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How many notifications did Firebase Cloud Messaging deliver during the 2022 World Cup final and what was the peak QPS?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Firebase Cloud Messaging delivered over 115 billion notifications to more than 400 million users during the 2022 Qatar World Cup. 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