Customer Announcements
ARD Chooses Akamai to Broadcast the Big Football Games
Together with its partner G&L, Akamai is once again managing high capacity during live events
Cambridge, MA USA | December 12, 2022
ARD is a joint organization of Germany’s regional public service broadcasters. One of them is Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), which is in charge of the internet streaming of the big football games on behalf of ARD.
WDR is the public service broadcaster in North Rhine-Westphalia — measured by the number of employees, the largest in Germany and, after the BBC, the second largest in Europe! We’re delighted that this exciting German media company has chosen to partner with Akamai again to broadcast the big football games this year. And to achieve this effectively, Akamai is in turn working with G&L (Geißendörfer und Leschinsky GmbH). This is a managed service provider from Cologne, with which Akamai has already had a reliable partnership for over 20 years.
The collaboration between Akamai, G&L, and WDR has been going strong for over 10 years. We are the trusted partners that have delivered the last high-peak live events without any issues. Understandably, there is demand for large capacity during the big football games, which Akamai is able to deliver, especially in combination with WDR's unique data privacy requirements. This year, Akamai is providing enhanced event support for 48 games (24 games streamed by ZDF, 24 games streamed by ARD).
The big football events are among the most watched in the world. Online audiences have grown to expect the best viewing experience possible, and Akamai’s solutions are key to deliver this. Our Adaptive Media Delivery solution is optimized for adaptive bit rate streaming to provide a high-quality, secure viewing experience across a broad variety of network types — fixed or mobile — at varying connection speeds. Built on the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform, AMD provides superior scalability, reliability, availability, and reach. Another key Akamai solution used by WDR during the big football games is Kona Site Defender. This is designed to protect the web and mobile assets of organizations from sophisticated web applications and DDoS attacks.
