BamTech’s headquarters are a massive sprawl. Inside the darkened “transmission operations center” on a recent afternoon, walls of monitors displayed hundreds of live events — baseball, golf, hockey, boxing, a speech by President Trump — being streamed to somewhere at that moment.
Outside the operations room, in a series of alcoves, including one that used to house an oven where Oreos were baked, employees monitor games and are the first line of defense if something goes wrong with a stream. They’re nicknamed the Night’s Watch, from HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”
The level of engineering required for that enormous volume of content is no small matter. Each bit of streamable content has to be made to fit a dizzying number of requirements. Start with web browsers, ranging from Safari to Chrome or Explorer, all of which have slightly different demands. It also has to fit every iPhone and Android phone. And then there are connected living room devices like Apple TV.
“The complexity there is incredible,” Mr. Paull said during a tour. “It’s thousands and thousands of different applications we need to build to support that entire ecosystem. Then you add in international and the complexities of languages, currencies, payment mechanisms.”
He added, “That’s one of the big, big barriers to entry if you want to have a scaled digital video service.”