Photos by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Riot Games
Riot Games has today opened a new 50,000 sq ft Project Stryker broadcast production facility at a former nightclub venue in Dublin, Ireland.
The new Dublin facility serves as a central broadcasting hub for both regional and global live esports productions across Riot’s trio of esports titles: League of Legends Esports (LoL Esports), Valorant Esports and Wild Rift Esports.
It’s the first of three Remote Broadcast Centers (RBCs) making up ‘Project Stryker, Powered by AWS’, Riot’s approach to global broadcast production, with the other two set to open in early 2023 (Seattle) and Q1 2024 (APAC).
The Dublin RBC of Project Stryker has been in development for three years, and is located at the space of the former nightclub Wright Venue in Swords. The venue will keep the disco ball to mark the space’s roots in entertainment.
It’s separate to Riot’s existing Dublin city centre office with 165 employees specialising in business operations, development, engineering, localisation and player support. Riot Games also has a UK office in Reading.
Broadcast feeds from live esports competitions happening around the world can be sent to the Dublin RBC where content is produced, broadcast and distributed in multiple languages to viewers around the world.
Project Stryker Dublin will generate more than 6,300 production hours annually for broadcast production, engineering, event, sound and graphic design professionals.
Riot says Dublin stood out as the ideal destination for the European HQ for Project Stryker ‘due to the quality of its infrastructure, position in the European market, talent pool and strategic location as part of the esports global ecosystem’.
How Riot’s three Project Stryker facilities will work including technical broadcast aspects
Riot says its three Remote Broadcast Centers (RBCs) making up Project Stryker will be strategically located eight hours apart to create a ‘follow-the-sun’ broadcast model to support live esports productions 24/7 for 365 days a year.
During a live esports event, a small contributor kit on-site sends live feeds back to the RBC through Riot Direct, the global private internet service provider powering every Riot game packet for players around the world. The feeds are then routed to control rooms for show productions across multiple languages.
In addition to content production, each RBC will also serve as a centralised storage and shipping location for global competition hardware, prioritising quality control for products used by esports pros at Riot’s global esports events.
Content storage is another element of Project Stryker with each geographic location also housing a data center and media content vault, where content is archived for future viewing.
Riot says its three Remote Broadcast Centers (RBCs) making up Project Stryker will be strategically located eight hours apart to create a ‘follow-the-sun’ broadcast model to support live esports productions 24/7 for 365 days a year.
Riot also says the impact of Project Stryker will reach beyond live esports broadcasts. Speciality spaces at Project Stryker RBCs include multi-purpose insert studios and AR/XR sound stages, ideal for creative production for Riot’s games and entertainment studios, while the media content vault will archive esports content.
Riot says its partnership with Cisco, a Riot Games global partner since 2020, has ‘been instrumental in helping Riot Esports modernise its infrastructure, utilise advanced technologies to support video workflows and expand capacity for new titles and ideas’.
Additionally, as part of a new global partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced this week, Project Stryker is now “Powered by AWS” as its official Cloud Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Machine Learning (ML), Cloud Deep Learning (DL), and Cloud Services provider.
Project Stryker Dublin executed its first global event earlier this month with Wild Rift Icons, and is currently supporting Valorant Masters 2 now underway in Copenhagen.
‘Project Stryker has come a long way from a visionary concept’ – Riot’s president of esports
“This is truly an exciting day for Riot, esports fans, and players around the world,” said John Needham, President of Esports at Riot Games.
“Project Stryker has come a long way from a visionary concept three years in the making, to this incredible state-of-the-art creative space – complete with a disco ball – that further extends Riot’s footprint in the city and showcases the deep ties to entertainment and innovation found in Dublin.
“We could not have selected a better location for our European headquarters for Project Stryker.
“Everything we do at Riot is driven by the goal of bringing joy to billions of esports fans around the world. The capabilities of Project Stryker put Riot in prime position to deliver on that goal, and revolutionise the sports viewing experience for some of the most passionate fans in the world.
“I can’t say enough how proud I am of our team at Riot that worked tirelessly to bring our Dublin RBC to life, and continues to grind around the clock on the next phases of Project Stryker coming online in the next two years.”
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
