The story behind YouTube’s NFL NEVERSTRAM

This year the football season starts with a twist: next tonight’s season season, YouTube will Stream NFL’s first match Seasons – face between charger Los Angeles and Cansas City Chieds are transmitted live by Sao Paula, Brazil – free to global audiences this Friday.

This is the first time youtube hosted such a sports sports event of high caliber in front of Payvall, and the video service in Google pulls out all the bells and whistles for it. There will be drones. There will be over 50 cameras. Karol G will perform the emission of the half time. Despite the comment of broadcasting Veteran Rich Eisen and Hall Famer Kurt Varner, fans will also be able to watch the game with youtube Creaters like Ishowpeed and Skabeche.

But it’s just half a story. I had the opportunity to call excluding some people on youtube that took part on Friday on Friday in the last few weeks about how the broadcast was connected. I learned that there is no plan B and Plan C to deal with unforeseen network networks, but even the last resort solution for return to Mary Informatively as “Doomsday Armageddon scenario” Armageddon. “

YouTube takes tests for weeks

To extract such a high-level event, YouTube has brought NBC as a manufacturing partner. The broadcaster broadcasted the game Brazil NFL on Paucock 2024. years and is managed by great work at the location for YouTube. “Much transmissions and equipment used last year is returned this year,” says Youtube to hire Sports Adam Masterson. This includes what is known in the broadcasting industry as a solution to Flipack – basically, studio in the box (fine, many boxes) that you can send to places where it rotates the truck is simply not feasible – adjusted designed For this location.

“NBC is the largest company for the production of delivery in the world due to Olympic Games,” Masterson explains.

Together, two companies built a pop-up production compound in Sao Paulo over the last few weeks, who was online and launched daily test broadcasts from the end of August. They include testing each camera and all local equipment, but also send a show test to youtube in the United States. It turns out that this is not as simple as only on YouTube and clicking the “Go Live” button, as regular creators.

“Getting a game from the stadium in Brazil Back to YouTube TV for this one-time event, through NBC, requires a little covered architecture,” says Masterson. The Grov emitted feed is delivered through what Masterson calls “Custom Fiber Solutions” on the NBC facility in Stamford, Connecticut. From there, it is sent to the NBC 30 Rock Studio in New York to control production, then to another NBC facility in Colorado, from where youtube is handed over.

Sounds complicated? That’s why youtube leaves nothing to destiny. In addition to fibrous cables, there will also be satellite connection in standby mode as a spare solution to make that supply to NBC. If all that fails, there is a plan C: Internet video connection, known as an Srt Feed, local YouTube Data Center in Brazil, entirely bypassing NBC.

And yes, there is always that plan D: “If our fiber goes bad, and God is going bad, and God forbids the SRT solution, we have something that we are called our DoomSDAI ARMAGEDON scenario, which is basically a guy with the camera and Liveu Backpack“Says Masterson. This would essentially allow youthube to live with one cameras, produced on flying one operator with a camera, and experts over a cell connection, much in the same way in the same way Go live in the field of civil unrest.

YouTube and NBC test the links between their facilities since the end of July, and youtubei’s own engineers were busy with testing everything from swallowing to control quality quality and video. “We spent a lot of time preparing for it,” says the infrastructure director who admitted Krahnstoever, who admits that his team still becomes butterflies before the event of this size.

“Our state is always unpleasantly excited,” Krahnstoeveev, adding, “I’m very sure we’re ready.”

YouTube’s history in Live video

This is not very youtube first born when it comes to life events. The service has been enjoyed in the video since 2008. years, and has officially supported live since 2012. year – Felix Baumgartner jumped from the plane on the edge of space, which resulted in 8 million simultaneous transmissions. “It was a really hero in many ways,” says Krahnstower about recently deceased parachute.

Since then, YouTube has hosted many high-profile events, including London-Trump Games (close to 2 million Bocelli (2.8 million parties, and Super Bowl LVIII on YouTube TV (8 million historical viewers). The service is also streams of football matches in Brazil in millions of spectators, which helped from construction of a local infrastructure used for this week’s event.

Massive transmission can be a challenge for any platform. Just ask Netflix, which badly tripped Some of your early live events. An additional challenge for YouTube is that the platform is open for almost anyone – which can lead to unexpected surprises.

When India has transferred its 2023 moon on YouTube, there was no thought that Google became head. With more than 8 million spectators, it became the biggest life event in front of the canvas, to date, surprisingly everything at YouTube. “That until we came to the next morning and saw our metric that (we realized that) something big happened,” Youtube infrastructure manager of the Kirk Haller’s engineering infrastructure manager.

Haller and Krahnstoever attribute a lot of YouTube resilience to that this is a platform that is open for everyone and everything. At any time, there are countless advantages, in the range of live news to be Esports Eagle Cams and Lofi Girl. And safe, massive live events such as Friday on the NFL game receive additional support, return solutions and devoted war rooms. But in the end, the streaming infrastructure is the same as the one that drives some vlogger you’ve never heard.

“If someone wants to transfer to Youtube, it’s the same platform used for YouTube TV and these other events of Tentpole,” says Krahnstower.

This shared infrastructure includes youTube’s Hardware designed to measure and one’s own global content delivery network. But there is a lot of cross-pollination in terms of visible features between the content created by the user and large live.

YouTube began to support a low-delay of 60fps flow to better satisfy the players. Now that comes well for live sports. And the service has developed its Multi-view function for live sports, but now uses the same composing technician behind the scene to allow creators Add remote guests to their lives.

“Generally, we try to build reuse,” says YouTube VP Christian Oestlien. “We want to make sure that we are not only the construction of free functions that rot in one particular part of our service.”

40 billion hours of sports each year

OseTlien was instrumental to launching a youtube TV eight years ago, and he moves to pay a TV service with a door opening to become more sports at all – including the game on Friday. “YouTube TV really helped us when we started having more direct talks with the League partners like NFL and media carriers,” he says.

One example is the NFL Sunday map that youtube TV carries from 2023. years. Be able to prove in the league that youtube could transmit these games to your subscribers every week at the end helped that the game for Friday could take that year for Friday.

OseTlien hopes this game will be another point of evidence and help persuade others to bring huge global live events and youtube. “It will be a really great opportunity for us (show) that we can deliver these moments in seminal water cooolers,” he says. “These very big events for tentologists who are such a large part of culture.”

However, youtube doesn’t just want to be another broadcaster, an application that replaces your cable food. Instead, it aims to be a platform that brings a new audience, including viewers that sports leagues failed to reach out. “All this work with the Creator to work will enter the entire new generation in the NFL,” said Oestlien.

If everything is good, it will lead to additional partnerships with other leagues and live events. That is beside that 40 billion hours Live sports programming and on request already consumed at Youtube annually.

In other words: It is driven a lot in the game on Friday for YouTube. Oestlien looks at the live action in Sao Paulo and admits that it will be tense, no matter what happens in the field. “When you switch from the sports fan for someone who delivers sports programming, the game becomes much more than the sport you are passionate about,” he says. “I’m a nervous wreck when these games happen.”

He joined him the location of Masterson and a handful of other team members, while there are still many accompanies the action – and all metrics related to the transfer – from youtube’s office in the United States. And when the game is over, the team must turn around and work immediately at the next great thing: NFL Weekly ticket, which begins for two days later.

Masterson even hooked his flight so he could return for his table on Sunday. In the end, hopes that big events of tentpole like a match on Friday will only be it for his team: a regular day in the office.

“There are a lot of anxiety and a lot of excitement around this event,” Masterson says. “I want to wake up one day and feel like just another day.”

This is Hunpass by Janko Roetgerscolumn on continuous crossroads of technique and entertainment, syndicated only for Edge subscribers once a week.