Riot Games, the publishers of League of Legends and one of the world’s biggest names in esports and gaming have officially opened their first global broadcast centre in Airside Retail Centre in North Dublin.
The building is a stones throw from the global headquarters of Ryanair and it is not a stretch to imagine this new development transforming online broadcast and Ireland’s place in the world of esports in the same way as Tony Ryan and Michael O’Leary did the world of aviation.
Having been given a private tour a number of weeks ago it was great to see the project ribbon cutting yesterday and to talk to General Manager Allyson Gormley about the project and how important it is to the company, to esports and to Ireland’s place in that world.
We will bring you that interview tomorrow morning.
The studio facilities from which Riot broadcasts live esports action from major tournaments around the world is the kind of set-up, that would make a traditional broadcaster’s jaw drop.
Almost zero latency on feeds coming in from Singapore, Denmark and all around the world provides for an exceptional viewing experience that redefines what we understand as a ‘live’ broadcast.
Dublin is the first in a ‘follow the sun’ model that will be followed by similar facilities in Seattle and in Asia.
It will serve as a central broadcasting hub for both regional and global live esports productions across League of Legends, Wild Rift, and VALORANT.
With over 50,000 square feet of space, the new facility features broadcast production, engineering, event, sound, and graphic design professionals.
It looks fantastic and it delivers everything it promises to hundreds of millions of gaming viewers.
The Irish project team including Henry J Lyons Architects and Structuretone have already begun working on the first of those on the West Coast of the United States.
The facility has already created an initial 120 new jobs in the esports sector here, most of them on-site at what used to be The Wright Venue nightclub near Ryanair’s Global HQ in the Airside Centre.
Staff from across the media and services landscape are already on board and live broadcasts are already well under way.
Allyson Gormley, who leads the Dublin operation of Riot Games has already been appointed as General Manager of the facility. Prior to joining Riot Games eight years ago, she served as Executive Assistant to John Treacy in his role as CEO of Sport Ireland.
“Pulling off a project and build of this magnitude is a colossal undertaking in any circumstance, let alone in a pandemic,” she said.
“This is great news for the e-sports sector in Ireland,” said Minister Darragh O’Brien who represented the Government at yesterday’s opening.
“Riot Games is world-renowned and the fact that the team has chosen Dublin as one of three locations globally to establish a new remote production broadcast centre, creating over 120 jobs, is a real vote of confidence in what we have to offer.”
Project STRYKER as the overall concept is known has been three years in development and is closely tied in to a relationship that Riot Games has built with Amazon Web Services.
Aside from being a key component of delivering the broadcast service, using Irish data centres AWS has also become a sponsor of Riot’s global esports events in LoL and VALORANT, as well as a founding sponsor of Wild Rift esports.
It is also now the official provider of Cloud Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Machine Learning, Cloud Deep Learning, and Cloud Services as well as enhancing the content around esports events by providing in-depth stats and insights in real time.
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