Designing Operational Readiness for 3,800 Live Hours

THE CHALLENGE

WBD was preparing for complete Paris 2024 coverage across its European streaming footprint. The program included roughly 3,800 live hours, 329 medal events, 32 sports, and as many as 54 simultaneous streams during a two-week window and code freeze.

MY ROLE

I owned operational readiness across the event window. My responsibility was to turn audience expectations, capacity risk, monitoring, and escalation into a repeatable plan that let engineering stay focused on planned work rather than reactive event support.

THE READINESS MODEL

I partnered with SRE, Architecture, Video Player, and Ad Tech to compare live and VOD load patterns, connect peak concurrency to peak requests per second, and create event tiers with appropriate buffer levels.

Rather than wait for a slow waterfall review cycle, I embedded with the program managers running execution day to day and built monitoring and escalation into their active planning rhythm.

THE RESULT

The event window remained operationally quiet. Tentpole moments such as the Opening Ceremony and 100-meter final reached approximately 500,000 to 600,000 concurrent viewers with zero incidents, while engineering teams stayed focused during the code freeze.

WHAT THIS DEMONSTRATES

• Large-scale live-event readiness • Capacity and concurrency planning • Cross-functional technical coordination • Data-backed risk management • Monitoring and escalation design • Influence without direct authority