Baseball Playoffs Boost Akamai Shares

Why is the stock of content delivery network Akamai (AKAM) surging today? Akamai shares are up $2.22 (7.8 percent) to $30.97 a share, apparently because Wall Street traders see benefits for Akamai's bottom line in strong traffic at MLB.com . Nearly 3 million people accessed the video stream of Monday's one-game National League wildcard playoff game between the San Diego Padres and Colorado Rockies on MLB.TV, which uses Akamai for its streaming media delivery.

September's tight pennant races generated huge traffic for MLB.com, which had more than 2.7 billion page views and 61 million unique visitors for the month, according to Major League Baseball. That will be welcome news to Akamai shareholders. Unless they're also Mets fans, in which case they're probably still inconsolable.