Riot Games Marks Official Opening of Inaugural Project Stryker Facility in Dublin, Ireland

Riot Games today celebrated the official opening of the first of three Remote Broadcast Centers (RBCs) making up Project Stryker, Powered by AWS, an innovative approach to global broadcast production that will transform live esports productions on a global scale. 

Three years in development, the Dublin RBC of Project Stryker 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. 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 millions of esports fans around the world.

“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.” 

A New Era of Entertainment Takes Over an Iconic Dublin Venue

As the first of three global locations selected to host Project Stryker RBCs, 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. 

Following an exhaustive search in the Dublin area, the space of the former Wright Venue in Swords was ultimately selected. Once regarded as one of Dublin’s most iconic entertainment establishments, the storied space will maintain its roots in entertainment with Project Stryker Dublin generating over 6,300 production hours annually for broadcast production, engineering, event, sound, and graphic design professionals.   

Project Stryker is Riot’s second footprint in Dublin, joining its City Centre office with 165 employees specializing in business operations, development, engineering, localization, and player support. The City Centre office currently stands as Riot’s largest office outside its global headquarters in Los Angeles. 

Project Stryker: a Masterclass in Global Collaboration

With ambitions to bring joy to billions of fans around the world through its esports, Riot has taken bold steps in this direction, expanding its esports portfolio with the VALORANT Champions Tour and Wild Rift Esports joining LoL Esports as Riot’s three globally operated esports competition series in the first-person shooter (FPS), mobile MOBA, and online MOBA categories, respectively. The exponential growth of live esports competitions and broadcast productions both at the regional and global level across all three esports was the catalyst to create a cost-efficient production solution with global reach that’s built to scale, reflecting Riot’s future investments in esports and technology. 

The three RBCs making up Project Stryker are strategically located eight hours apart to create a “follow-the-sun” broadcast model to support live esports productions 24/7/365. During a live esports event, a small contributor kit onsite sends live feeds back to the RBC through Riot Direct, the global private internet service provider powering every Riot game packet for every player around the world. The feeds are then routed to control rooms for unique show productions across multiple languages. 

In addition to content production, each RBC will also serve as a centralized storage and shipping location for global competition hardware, prioritizing 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 correctly for future discovery and viewing. 

The global collaboration seen across Project Stryker is also reflected in the numerous partners and vendors that were instrumental in bringing the concept to life. A Riot Games global partner since 2020, Cisco’s partnership has been instrumental in helping Riot Esports modernize its infrastructure, utilize advanced technologies to support video workflows & 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.

Building a Foundation for the Future of Sport, Entertainment

As Riot Games continues to execute on its vision toward creating a new kind of entertainment company rooted in games, the impact of Project Stryker will reach beyond live esports broadcasts. Speciality spaces found at Project Stryker RBCs such as multi-purpose insert studios and AR/XR sound stages unlock potential creative production opportunities for Riot’s games and entertainment studios, while the media content vault ensures accessibility of archived esports content for future viewing experiences. 

“Everything we do at Riot is driven by the goal of bringing joy to billions of esports fans around the world,” Needham said. “The capabilities of Project Stryker put Riot in prime position to deliver on that goal, and revolutionize 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.” 

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. The next RBC is currently in development in the greater Seattle area with an estimated completion date of early 2023. The third and final Project Stryker RBC will be located in the APAC and is slated for full operations by Q1 2024.