Director of broadcast IT Ralph Riley on expanding WWE’s distribution network

For perhaps most of the fans in the one billion global households in more than 180 countries that watch World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), seeing a knockout blow is the whole point of consuming the sport. For a content provider rapidly expanding a streaming infrastructure across the globe, avoiding a network knockout blow is top priority.

WWE sees itself as a global entertainment brand much like a Hollywood studio in the way it creates programming. In addition to high-definition production from its in-house facility, it offers premium live events – including the massively popular annual WrestleMania professional wrestling event – as well as scheduled programming, a large video-on-demand library, digital media and the WWE streaming network.

Available on desktops, laptops and mobile devices via WWE.com, WWE Network is also available through the WWE Network app across a variety of platforms/devices. In the US it has an exclusive partnership with NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service.

This means in the US alone it is supported on the Roku platform; Apple devices including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD; Google platforms and devices including Android, Android TV devices, Chromecast and Chromecast built-in devices; Microsoft’s Xbox One family including Xbox One S and Xbox One X; Sony PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Pro and PlayStation 5; Vizio SmartCast TVs; and LG Smart TVs. From 2025, Netflix will also be a partner in a deal that will see WWE’s flagship Monday Night Raw show air on the SVOD platform.

Read more Netflix to become new home of WWE Raw from 2025 in ‘transformative’ deal

All of this adds to the rather considerable complexity and responsibility already lying in the wheelhouse of WWE’s director of broadcast IT, Ralph Riley. The executive’s key task is managing the organisation’s network infrastructure for its TV and studio business, ensuring the global business’s digital experiences – in particular streaming video transmission – are delivered 24/7, without interruption. There’s a very clear dollar value put on this: any disruption to services can cost millions of dollars instantly, in addition to brand reputational damage that has already stuck to some other rival online providers.

What this means in practice is that the company has had to construct a solid infrastructure, paying particular attention to its complex digital supply chain between events.

“When you think about the the way in which we used to watch sports entertainment back in the day, now it’s all changed with digital platforms, streaming platforms. I look at that from a tech perspective of how I can make sure that my infrastructure is robust and resilient enough to support whatever demands that may be on me and my team,” Riley observes. “[We need] an infrastructure that is capable of delivering all of our content at speed… In our way of work, our engineering team takes that content, and we are constantly editing it and repackaging it to make sure that it gets out to our affiliates across the world. And to be able to do that with our type of infrastructure is so crucial. We have to make sure that our SLAs are met. We have to make sure that we are within our contractual ability to get content packages in the way that our global partners want to edit.”

Speaking at the recent Cisco Live conference, Riley noted that this digital supply chain begins with the company’s TV production studio in Stamford, Connecticut, in the US – where it also has its corporate office – linking to a vast fleet of outside broadcast trucks that transmit video from around the world. Keeping things up and running, with acceptable quality for viewers is simply fundamental, he said. Network management, monitoring and reliability technology was the key, he added.

Outlining the steps taken in guaranteeing the quality of content distribution, he said: “We are an operation that really never stops. In order for us to be as resilient as possible, we need to make sure that in our TV studio, our internet service providers and our connections through them are [operating] at top-notch bandwidth speeds at all times. Well, of course things aren’t always like that in a real professional world. I think more than ever, to be resilient in technology, and with an infrastructure that’s not up all the time, is not easy.”

WWE’s monitoring and reliability infrastructure is based on solutions from networking technology and services giant Cisco. WWE is a long-time customer of Cisco and Riley says that it has been interesting to see the evolution of the technology from where WWE was decades ago when it started operations and it was supporting the production and engineering in its TV studio to where it is now. Riley describes the development of the technology and increase in the required bandwidth for distribution as having “simply been amazing”.

Riley is not only responsible for what is happening in the studio but he also manages all of the trucks that go out to events and the connection between them and the base. “When you think of WWE and our network infrastructure, to me it’s quite amazing because what goes on behind the scenes, what you see on TV is really such a technological advancement for us. We have our TV production studio in Stamford, Connecticut. We have our corporate office and then we also have our trucks that roll around and Cisco gear is in all of our arenas around the US and around the world that are constantly [being set] up for events and being taken down the next day.

“Being able to support that is really incredible when you think about it. We have a Cisco Nexus environment in our TV studio and we also have access points on the road. But for us right now, in terms of the road infrastructure popping up all the time, Cisco ThousandEyes allows us to see that point-to-point between our agents on the road and our agents in the TV production studio.”

“I think more than ever, to be resilient in technology, and with an infrastructure that’s not up all the time, is not easy”

For its part, Cisco believes it has supplied WWE with more than just the appropriate functional elements that prevent networking issues. Joe Vaccaro, general manager and vice president of the Cisco ThousandEyes network intelligence division, regards the WWE deployment as exemplifying a modern digital business’s vision of moving beyond mere network monitoring and towards the adoption of the practice of digital experience assurance and resilience.

To ensure resilience with an infrastructure such as WWE’s is no easy task, Riley concedes. But fundamentally he is confident that the digital experiences of WWE’s viewers can be assured. “When you think about where we were years ago with antiquated infrastructure and antiquated technology, we were kind of just placing all of our bets in one area,” he continues. “But now with [the new technology infrastructure] it has been a blessing for us to be able to reduce the time it takes to find issues and be proactively alerted to them.

“Before, we were getting calls from our remote engineer saying, ‘Hey, something’s wrong, something’s down, what’s going on?’ And then you know, we’re scratching our heads. We didn’t have visibility into that infrastructure, but now, because of ThousandEyes agents [we do]. We’re able to utilise a proactive point of entry for anyone to monitor and that’s been a game-changer for all teams involved in the production.”