Red Bee delivers Netherlands’ biggest livestream ever with an estimated 2 million joining Vrienden van Amstel live

Red Bee Media delivered the biggest livestream ever seen in the Netherlands, when Vrienden van Amstel (Friends of Amstel) was held as a digital event for the first time in its 23-year-old history on January 16, 2021. Participation surpassed all expectations, with an estimated 2 Million* viewers from across 120 countries worldwide. Amstel, event agency Tribe Company and media production company FabriQ Media Group, relied on Red Bee to make sure the ambitiously planned live event, with some of the country’s biggest artists, was delivered without interruption to audiences across the world. During headline act Armin van Buuren’s DJ set, the number of simultaneous streams peaked at 750,000.

Vrienden van Amstel, or “the largest pub in the Netherlands”, is one of the country’s biggest live music events, hosting around 150,000 attendees at the Ahoy Rotterdam arena every year. With Covid-19 restrictions in place, event agencies Tribe Company and FabriQ Media Group needed a partner who could provide a reliable livestreaming platform, capable of delivering hundreds of thousands of high-quality streams. Global media services company Red Bee Media was chosen to deliver the event through their managed OTT platform on www.vriendenstream.nl.

“When the largest pub in the Netherlands opens digitally for the first time, offering live entertainment from the biggest artists in country, you know that you can expect a lot of traffic on your platform”, says Tim Verhulsdonck, Founder and Managing Partner, FabriQ Media Group. “With 650,000 tickets sold upfront, there is absolutely no room for mistakes, and after collaborating with Red Bee on SemiFest Live, we knew they were the right partner to deliver a flawless livestream to homes across the Netherlands and the world. Throughout the whole event they maintained a steady hand, delivering high-quality streams with no hick-ups or interruptions.”

Red Bee was responsible for the end-to-end delivery of the livestream through the company’s managed OTT platform, including acquisition of the feeds, transcoding, user entitlement and delivery to the event website and white label applications.

Red Bee’s comprehensive OTT Platform gives brands and content owners the possibility to launch a fully-fledged streaming service, rapidly and easily. It supports all content formats including linear, live, catch-up and on-demand as well as the full range of monetization options (including ad-funded, subscription, pay-per-view and vouchers). The service integrates easily with many other Red Bee services including content aggregation, metadata and automatic captioning. The platform also includes advanced geo blocking and DRM options, which allows for audience segmentation.

Facts and figures:

• Average simultaneous viewers during the show: 650,000
• Peak of more than 750,000 simultaneous viewers during Armin van Buuren’s performance
• Total of 1.3+ million played hours.
• Audience of 1.7 million unique viewers over the entire show
• 2.3 Tbps in bandwidth used, peaking at 319,200 requests per second

*Based on 750,000 tickets sold and an average of 2.3 people per household.

Visit amstel.nl/vriendenvanamstel for more info on Vrienden van Amstel.