Challenge

Dyn Media entered the sports streaming industry in Germany with the goal of providing comprehensive coverage of emerging sports such as handball, basketball, volleyball, hockey, and table tennis. Formed through a joint venture between former German Football League CEO Christian Seifert and media giant Axel Springer, the company had one year to build and launch a reliable and scalable streaming platform for the upcoming seasons.

The company needed to prioritise minimising hardware by using cloud and remote workflows, adopting seamless integration, and ensuring dynamic scalability to support massive live video transport across thousands of scheduled games. It also needed a payment and subscription partner capable of handling a high volume of transactions per second. These factors would enable three key areas of Dyn Media’s service: a content desk for uploading and downloading content; internet-based content delivery; and effective management of subscriptions, global payments, and billing.

To achieve rapid development and process large volumes of almost real-time data while managing subscriptions smoothly, the company explored services that ensured high performance, scalability, and minimal downtime.

Solution

With the expectation of broadcasting over 2,500 games in its first season, Dyn Media sought to ensure it could scale its video platform without service interruptions. After five years of successful collaboration with AWS, a Stripe partner, the leadership team chose to build the infrastructure for its sports streaming service on AWS. “AWS provides a breadth and depth of solutions that give us the flexibility to develop new features while meeting the dynamic demands of live sports streaming,” said Andreas Heyden, CEO of Dyn Media.

Dyn Media worked with Stripe to monetise its content. “We saw that the flexibility Stripe could offer us, paired with its technical stability, would help power the great experience we wanted customers to associate with our brand,” said Fabian Dressen, technical lead at Dyn Media.

To build trust with customers, Dyn Media introduced a pre-sales phase, allowing them to register and subscribe before the service launched. Billing began only once Dyn Media started offering its service, creating the need for scalable infrastructure capable of handling multiple simultaneous transactions. With Stripe and AWS Lambda, Dyn Media found the right solution to meet its needs while ensuring a smooth customer experience.

“The reliability of AWS gives us back the time we’d otherwise spend on ensuring servers are up and running,” said Heyden. “That is more time we can commit to creating great experiences for our customers.”

Dyn Media used Stripe Billing for flexible subscription management and automated billing to enhance its offerings. With Stripe Payments, the company can accept online payments from customers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. “Stripe’s services helped us give our customers more choices and allowed us to create other consumption models for fans beyond our monthly and annual subscription options,” said Heyden.

Additionally, Dyn Media onboarded Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite, which includes Stripe Elements – a set of embeddable UI components that improve the checkout flow and drive conversion – and Link, an accelerated checkout solution that securely stores customers’ payment information for faster transactions. The company implemented the Payment Element to support a variety of payment methods, ensuring flexibility for customers, including the ability to accept SEPA Direct Debit transfers for simplified bank transactions in euros. Over eight weeks, Stripe’s professional services team worked with Dyn Media to implement solutions, apply best practices, and oversee the launch.

Results

New platform launched in under 12 months to target audience of 17 million viewers

Using Stripe’s payment solutions and over 150 AWS services to enhance user experiences, Dyn Media launched in under 12 months, effectively supporting the sportscaster’s content delivery to a target market of 17 million viewers.

“By building on AWS, we were able to create an event-driven architecture that scales from 0 to 100,000 users in 45 seconds,” said Moritz Mücke, head of product and technology. “It is difficult to find a service that can support that load.”

Dyn Media’s Stripe integration enabled the company to simplify subscription management and improve billing for its growing user base. With AWS providing a reliable foundation for scalability and Stripe offering flexible payment options, Dyn Media successfully meets the demands of sports streaming.

99.999% uptime for payments processing by implementing Stripe

The collaboration with Stripe’s professional services team enabled Dyn Media to achieve a smooth launch and maintain effective post-launch operations. With Billing, Dyn Media can offer both annual and monthly subscriptions while continuously adding payment options. This capability allows the company to handle high transaction activity during initial platform sign-ups and registration fee collection. By ensuring 99.999% uptime, Stripe provides reliable service during peak periods. In addition to secure payment processing, Stripe helps Dyn Media increase revenue by boosting conversions and minimising customer turnover.

“Stripe’s professional guidance, along with its comprehensive payment and billing solutions, helps us build trust and confidence with our customers,” said Mücke.

Heyden added, “The functionality and dependability that AWS and Stripe provide has prepared us for the next stage of growth."