How a Traditional MPLS Network Is Breathing Life into a New Sports Streaming Service

Germans are big into sports, but our sports broadcasting market focuses heavily on just one: football (soccer to North Americans). Football is extremely popular in Germany, but football isn’t the only game Germans want to watch. In a nation of 85 million, roughly 17 million people are interested in other sports, like handball, basketball, field hockey, and volleyball. Until 2023, however, that fact was not reflected in the German media landscape. Other sports than football played, at best, only a secondary role for the existing players.

We created Dyn Media to change that.

In German, Dyn (which was the first physical measuring unit for force) is pronounced like “dein” at that means “your.” Dyn is your sport, your club, and your sports broadcaster: sports media focused on the most popular sports in Germany apart from football. Our mission is to move these sports, long placed in the back row, now to the front row. We’re telling the story of these sports and the athletes who play them through excellent broadcasts and enjoyable social media formats. Additionally, we give 10% of our revenue to youth development, creating the next generation of players and supporters.

Getting a new streaming service off the ground requires a strong network—and a partner who doesn’t shy away from a monumental task. 

We Had to Do Things Differently

Dyn Media faced two significant challenges in launching our platform. The first was acquiring media rights. Luckily, many were intrigued by the idea of building a larger audience for their neglected leagues and developing a sustainable, next-generation broadcaster to do it. It helped that the idea came from Christian Seifert, former Bundesliga CEO and one of the most successful media managers in Germany, and Axel Springer SE, the sixth-largest publishing house in the world. 

The combination of Christian’s vision, knowledge, and credibility combined with Axel Springer’s audience and investment gave our supporters confidence in our venture. With their support, we acquired all the relevant rights for handball, basketball, volleyball, table tennis, and field hockey in only six months.

Once we attained these rights, we faced our second major challenge: our timeline. Sport leagues follow a fixed calendar, and broadcasts have to follow that calendar. We had about a year to create a plan, find a technology partner, build the platform, and market it. Everything had to work on day one, because the season starts whether we’re ready or not.

Our other major challenge was operational. Dyn Media is at the start of its journey, and we didn't had the resources of long existing broadcasters. We had to do something differently from the start. We put sustainability at the core of what we do, both in sports development and for the environment.

To fulfill our vision as a sustainable sports broadcaster, we developed a remote production and operations model that sits atop a base layer of connectivity. There is a lot of environmental overhead and additional costs to broadcast a live sports event, and our remote production model eliminates all of that.

Not Many Partners Could Handle the Pressure

For our approach to work, we needed a partner who met our requirements:

• The partner had to be technically capable of achieving what we were contractually obligated to accomplish within a year. 
• We wanted them to have experience in our industry, where seconds are minutes and minutes are hours. When watching sport, lags are unacceptable. People expect their car will fail one day, but never their TV—and never during a live sports event. And with OTT broadcasting, we needed to be perfect from the first second we went live.
• They needed to be capable of handling that pressure. 

We created a formal bidding process and discovered very early on that few players were willing to take on this challenge. But Riedel Networks raised their hand and said, “We can do this.”

Many of us on the Dyn Media management team have worked with Riedel in the past, so we already had a certain amount of trust in them. And Riedel was not only up for the challenge; they were also very hands-on from the early stages. Thomas Riedel, who founded Riedel Communications in 1987, took part in our first workshop, contributing ideas and offering creative solutions to how we could achieve our vision. These were among the reasons why we chose Riedel’s Managed MPLS Network.

What We Get with Managed Services

Dyn Media doesn’t have a dedicated role for external network operations, so opting for a managed services package through Riedel was a must.

The first benefit is for project management. Our situation in Germany is more complex than in places like the US, where most teams or at least their owners own the arena where they play. In Germany, an arena may be owned by the club, a city, a community or a third party, so we had to communicate directly with city authorities, venues, and club owners. While we already had some agreements in place, a project manager would continue those relationships and handle physical elements like digging cables for fiber and working with subcontractors. At the time, we still had to connect to 38 arenas around the country—all while being mindful of health, safety, and environmental protocols. Riedel had to delay digging in Hamburg until after the breeding season of an endangered bird, for example. Navigating these regulations is part of the service.

Managed services also offer productivity in a plug: Our responsibilities lie only in the work after plugging into the network. This benefit is crucial to our model. For us to offer a compelling price for our product, we can’t afford camera operators who travel across the country, and we don’t want the carbon footprint associated with that production process.

Instead, our remote production model relies heavily on fiber connectivity. We are Germany’s largest fiber purchaser for sports broadcast for the next six years. From every one of our stadiums, a 1GB cable connects to a 10GB ring, allowing for six camera signals per game, with up to 14 games in parallel. The 10GB ring then connects to our remote production facility, where we edit and produce the programs to stream to our subscribers. Riedel Networks provides this infrastructure we need to deliver a perfect signal efficiently, and our subscribers don’t notice a difference in our broadcast compared to a traditional one.

In addition to our MPLS, we use Riedel’s Simplylive Production Suite and communication devices, such as their Bolero wireless intercom. In a remote or hybrid production scenario, communication is key. Working with a single vendor for networking, editing, and communications is a major advantage since it leaves no room for finger-pointing when there’s an issue. Riedel’s love and energy for this project was also great to see.

A Brighter Future for German 2nd Tier Sports

Dyn Media went live in August 2023, and the most important metric is: Does it work? The network is the foundation of our mission, and we had it up and running in 85% of our arenas for the start of the season. (The delays in the final 15% were related to city permits for cable digging.) Now that all venues are operational, we have produced over 400 games on our MPLS network since then.

There will always be challenges with a remote production model. For example, league compositions change every year, so sometimes we may only have a couple of months to connect a venue between seasons. But from our experience connecting our existing arenas, Dyn Media and Riedel have learned some lessons we can apply as we grow, and we will be able to move even faster.

I think this will be a big market for network operators throughout Europe and Australia, where there are many competitions that involve a lot of travel. Simultaneous broadcasts multiply the personnel costs of stadium-based production, while remote production saves a lot of time and energy. And our team is happy to work remotely. They can produce more games in a day, which means higher pay, and they avoid being constantly on the road, which allows them to stay connected with their lives.

No one had to invent anything new for this project, but the result was new—Riedel stood up a typical MPLS network to launch a new frontier in sport. The network is expensive, but the TCO is lower, and we pass the cost savings on to our subscribers. 

Without a legacy to hold us back, we are creating the next generation of sports broadcasting. Dyn Media is one of the top companies in the world committed to producing sports media in a way that makes sense for today.