Energy-drink giant Red Bull's position on the extreme fringes of alternative sports has become well known at both ends of that often strange spectrum: from the deadly serious - Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner's 24-plus-mile freefall from the edge of space - to the frivolous - its Flugtag competition in which aerodynamically questionable contraptions are pushed off piers. Between those attention-grabbing outings, Red Bull Media House, the company's production arm, has grown into one of the top sports-content producers on YouTube and is one of only two sports channels globally to hit 1 billion views.
Red Bull's ongoing videogame-tournament-event series, Red Bull Battle Grounds, offers a peek at what regular team play sounds and looks like.
It was one of the inaugural Action Sports content producers as part of YouTube's Original Channels initiative in 2011. The company has produced 13 exclusive series, totaling nearly 30 hours of programming, which chronicled the competition and personalities of leading action-sports athletes in snowboarding, skateboarding, mountain biking, surfing, freestyle motocross, and other alt sports. Baumgartner's live-streamed freefall, branded as Red Bull Stratos, earned Red Bull Media House and YouTube a National Sports Emmy Award for Outstanding New Approaches - Sports Event Coverage, not to mention 9.5 million concurrent views, which took up 8% of all Internet bandwidth that day.
Moving into virtual sports, Red Bull Media house recently opened its eSports Studio at its U.S. base of operations in Santa Monica, CA, betting heavily that it can ride the burgeoning wave of competitive online videogaming into the mainstream and become the ESPN of virtual sports just as videogaming is transitioning into a spectator sport. One of the company's first major Webcasts along those lines took place last year when 11,000 spectators in the Seattle Sonics' home arena watched five-person teams play each other on videogame Dota 2 for prizes totaling $11 million. Its ongoing videogame-tournament-event series, Red Bull Battle Grounds, offers a peek at what regular team play sounds and looks like.
Infrastructure
For the Seattle event, much of what has been installed in the Santa Monica facility was flypacked for delivery to the venue. It included Panasonic three-chip AG-HPX170 cameras, for wide shots and talent/announce shots on-screen, and Replay XD cameras, for POV shots, mainly of players' faces and hands, picking up the all-important actions per minute, or APM, the number of keyboard and mouse clicks a player racks up during 60 seconds of play, a metric critical in games like StarCraft II, one of the staple platforms of competitive videogaming. (The best players, who are usually South Koreans, tend to average 200-400 actions per minute.)
Audio consists mainly of sound effects and music from within the game itself. However, Webcast videogaming is developing its own audio tropes, such as player-headset mic-booms' picking up dialogue as participants relate strategy and check on teammates' physical and mental conditions, and from open microphones on the cameras that pick up the sound of keyboards being tapped and mice being moved, an aural representation of the APM.
Most of the video and audio content comes from within the games themselves, as does much of what would be done by the director in conventional sports broadcasting. The game-play producer, an individual who acts as a referee with an omnipotent God's-eye view of play, often determines the arc of the games. And, as in conventional sports programming, Red Bull's eSports Studio also produces personality profiles of gamers that pepper the show.
This is our Bristol'
Regular sports broadcasts have been a kind of template for us and for videogaming as it develops into a spectator sport, says Scott Gillies, global head of production engineering and technology, Red Bull Media House. At the end of the day, we're both trying to find ways to tell authentic, compelling stories.
Gesturing towards the eSports Studio, where those stories are now being put together, Rob Simpson eSports program manager, Red Bull, says simply, This is our Bristol, a reference to ESPN's technical-operations center in Connecticut.
Teams face off at the Red Bull eSports Center while millions can watch online.
Beyond audio and video, getting live-audio gaming to the masses online has similar analogies to cable and broadcast infrastructure, differing mainly in terms of scale, with a lot less technology needed to reach an audience of millions. A NewTek TriCaster serves as the platform for live video switching, graphics, special effects, audio mixing, recording, social-media publishing, and Web streaming. The stream, after conversion to the H.264/MPEG-4 format via an Elemental Live transcoder, is ported to Akamai as the network's distributing CDN.
eSports Studio relies heavily on Riedel Communications' MediorNet real-time network, RockNet audio system, and Artist digital matrix intercom system. On a typical show featuring two teams of five players each, MediorNet modular frames take in a total of 20 HDMI POV video signals from the gaming consoles, converts them into HD-SDI, and carries them to the control room. These inputs are combined with the primary gameplay feeds to produce the complete eSports broadcast assets. An additional MediorNet compact frame is used to bring in complementary shots from other parts of the competition.
The Artist system supports inter-team player communications, as well as the intercom and on-air audio from the commentators; the same product is also being used to create a custom downmix of game audio specific to each team, as well as the overall audio feed to the audio-mixing console.
A single four-core fiber cable, equipped with OpticalCo
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
06/12/2025
In a live broadcast from the Reagan National Defense Forum, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher Kubasik joined Morgan Brennan on CNBCs Closing Bell: Overtime. Ku...
06/12/2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. A new survey from Pixitmedia by Datacore revealed a major shift in the Media & Entertainment industry in media archiving, with 85% of resp...
06/12/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. LiveU has announced that the national public broadcaster Czech Television has completed one of the largest LiveU live production deployments fo...
06/12/2025
NEW YORK The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leight...
05/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nati...
05/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Veritone's Sean King on the Power of Mining Video, Audio DataThe company's Data Refinery offers users total control and governance over da...
05/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: Inside the Nashville Predators' Unified, Flexible, Sca...
05/12/2025
Netflix Reaches Agreement To Acquire Warner Bros. Following Planned WBD SplitThe deal does not include WBDs sports assets like TNT Sports (US, UK, LatAm), Euros...
05/12/2025
FOX Sports Returns to Indianapolis for Primetime Broadcast of Big Ten Championsh...
05/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Digital Engagement & Monetization Workshop Tackles the ...
05/12/2025
Atlanta United Lights Up New Emory Healthcare Studio With First Live Broadcast f...
05/12/2025
As Messi Takes the Pitch, MLS, Apple, NEP Roll Out Largest MLS Cup Production Ev...
05/12/2025
ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows fo...
05/12/2025
It's about that time! Awards season is in full swing, and the Film Independe...
05/12/2025
Every year, Spotify Wrapped offers a personalized look back at the audio that defined your year. It's a snapshot of your listening habits, designed to tell ...
05/12/2025
In 2025, Spotify's EQUAL, GLOW, and RADAR programs celebrated women, LGBTQIA , and emerging artists who turned moments into milestones. From breaking record...
05/12/2025
In our latest blog, we explain how Wi-Fi 7 rollouts can drive consumer loyalty with value-add services such as consumer cybersecurity. We also explore how this ...
05/12/2025
LOS ANGELES Netflix announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Nielsens Gracenote has launched Gracenote Content Connect, a new ad platform that provides agencies, brands, supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-si...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK In an most important update to the workings of deal-based programmatic advertising, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its Deals API for public c...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Pass the turkey. Pass the stuffing. Pass the cranberry sauce. All are common requests of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving Day with family and f...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. Netflix announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T's $1.02 billion acquisition of spectrum from UScellular in a decision that was issued sho...
05/12/2025
The Best Coldplay Songs: 21 Tracks That Shoot for the Stars From Yellow to Viva La Vida, Fix You to Paradise, this playlist goes back to the start.
December ...
05/12/2025
Zafris Lecture Series Brings Nabil Ayers to Berklee The 32nd annual James G. Zafris Distinguished Lecture series was held on Thursday, November 13, with guest...
05/12/2025
Introducing New Perks to Help You Get Even More from LinkedIn Premium Published on Dec 5, 2025 Categories: Company News, Product News
LinkedIn Corporate Co...
05/12/2025
Friday 5 December 2025
A new Game of Thrones Tale: Official trailer for Sky Exc...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Don Lee, Lee Jin-uk, and Lalisa Manobal to Star in Netflix Act...
05/12/2025
Tis the season of giving once again and this year we've taken our Give Back Fridays' concept and turned it on its head.
In the autumn we were approach...
05/12/2025
Brayden Gogis doesn't remember a time when he wasn't completely fixated on games in all forms. In preschool, when they asked us to dress up as what we ...
05/12/2025
The Grinch steals the spotlight as the theme for The Late Late Toy Show 2025
Tune in tonight at 9:35pm on RT One and worldwide on RT Player
#LateLateToyShow...
05/12/2025
RT Announces New Presenters of Flagship News Programmes
New RT Six One News co-presenter Tommy Meskill
Sarah McInerney & Justin McCarthy join Morning Ir...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & ...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir AJA Ki Pro Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & just:in linux
More Details:Starting with version 5.5, both just:in mac pro and just:in linux sol...
04/12/2025
Wangu Kanuri from Kenya and Godwin Asediba from Ghana are two of this years finalists for Thomsons Young Journalist of the Year Award. The pair are runners-up i...
04/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: ProximaVision's Claudio Lisman on Why Tethered Drones Could Be...
04/12/2025
SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Co...
04/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: LiveU Lightweight Sports Production: A Step Change in Spor...
04/12/2025
London to Riyadh: DAZN brings the boxing glamour to new production levels for Be...
04/12/2025
Analysis: Paramount bets on the battering ram' with Champions League play By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:12
Print ...
04/12/2025
Space City Home Network Launches SCHN DTC App for Astros and RocketsThe Rockets and Astros were previously the lone NBA and MLB teams without a DTC appBy Jason...
04/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Content Workflows Workshop Spotlights Evolution of Spor...
04/12/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Geotech's Patrick Wambold On the Unreal Engine Revolu...
04/12/2025
Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nationally and RegionallyBy Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 1:52 pm
Print This Sto...
04/12/2025
(L-R) Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Judith Helfand att...
04/12/2025
SBS launches Future Frames initiative to support emerging First Nations video ed...
Energy-drink giant Red Bull's position on the extreme fringes of alternative sports has become well known at both ends of that often strange spectrum: from the deadly serious - Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner's 24-plus-mile freefall from the edge of space - to the frivolous - its Flugtag competition in which aerodynamically questionable contraptions are pushed off piers. Between those attention-grabbing outings, Red Bull Media House, the company's production arm, has grown into one of the top sports-content producers on YouTube and is one of only two sports channels globally to hit 1 billion views.
