BitFire Networks Supports NFL Radio Broadcasts in 2021-22 Season

For the entire 2021-2022 NFL Football Season, BitFire’s technology will bring all the excitement of the NFL to radio airwaves across the country. BitFire’s new partnership with Adhara Communications will provide broadcasting support for every game during the season. For most games, BitFire’s systems will connect multiple broadcasts from each NFL stadium with home, away and national calls all happening simultaneously.

Sports and technology firm Adhara Communications coordinated the massive install of a private and secure fiber MPLS network at all 30 NFL venues. Adhara then deployed their Line Out Connectivity Services (LOCS), which marries Adhara’s MPLS with BitFire’s services and proprietary technology. BitFire is contracted to power and serve LOCS.

“Redundant internet connections are not unique,” says Bob Sullivan, President and CEO of BitFire Networks. “However, our system allows it to be supported with just one BitFire server onsite. Both connections use the BitFire Transport Network, providing support, monitoring, reliability and security.”

Adhara’s clients consist of 30 of the 32 NFL teams and the four national radio broadcast networks, Westwood One, Compass, ESPN and Sports USA. All will be utilizing BitFire’s proprietary technology and support from their 24/7 Network Operations Center.

That MPLS network at each venue link back to BitFire’s Network Operations Center (NOC) in Boston, MA – connecting BitFire to each stadium.

BitFire built their own network to connect stations around the country to the venues. To enable that link, BitFire provisioned and deployed servers to all the radio affiliate stations and the national broadcasters.

The custom BitFire servers provide each station with their own network subnet linked back to the MPLS network and by utilizing the BitFire Transport Network, the connections are supported by the same recovery algorithms used in BitFIre’s industry leading IP video transport solutions.

Using BitFire’s solution allows each station to connect to the Adhara MPLS network with MPLS-like redundancy over the public internet. BitFire’s recovery algorithms are applied 100% transparently and are compatible with all equipment, requiring no reconfiguration of any IP-based device. This allows stations to use their same established workflows when connecting their broadcast devices, both at the stadium and in their station control rooms.

“Game day only comes once a week,” says Michelle Salvatore, CEO of Adhara Communications. “Live broadcasts require the most robust solutions to deliver content to fans. We are very excited to offer our NFL teams the latest in broadcast technology and infrastructure to meet these demands. In just 6 weeks, Adhara Communications, along with our partners, deployed a brand new radio broadcast backhaul network. We replaced an existing legacy copper network at the 30 NFL stadiums with a state of the art fiber optic based MPLS network with an SDWAN over cellular failover solution giving full redundancy for delivery of critical content.

BitFire’s pioneering technology also allows for multiple internet networks to be connected to a single server, with 100% redundancy should any connection encounter issues, ensuring the highest quality broadcast connection during the game production.

“Our strategic partnership with BitFire and their proprietary transport protocol and network operation expertise assures NFL broadcasts the highest quality, most reliable backhaul network to date,” adds Salvatore. “We look forward to our multi-year partnership with BitFire and deploying LOCS to other leagues and live events.”

BitFire’s level of support is unmatched in the industry today. Our NOC onboarded each NFL radio station and worked to configure and test their equipment for the season. The BitFire NOC will also provide 24/7 monitoring and oversight of the connections at both the radio stations and at the venues.

“This is certainly the wave of the future and BitFire continues to be on the leading edge,” adds Sullivan. “BitFire creates state of the art, innovative solutions for clients searching for more reasonable, enhanced and advanced broadcasting options.”