For the very first time, the FC Köln (Cologne Football Club) carried out its membership meeting as a hybrid live and digital event.
At the November meeting, FC Köln members took part in a lively discussion of various topics before choosing a new membership council. Around 526 participants were present at the LANXESS arena in Cologne, while 1,829 were digitally connected.
FC Köln worked with a number of partners to enable the successful hybrid format. The onsite, live production was handled by the video firm Crosscast. Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier received the streamed content and, in cooperation with other providers, converted it into the necessary formats and quality levels. This enabled secure, uninterrupted delivery to the online viewers. The other companies involved were G&L Geißendörfer, Leschinsky GmbH and Akamai, a longstanding Telekom partner with an extensive Content Delivery Network (CDN) and security solutions portfolio.
The company Voting Partner provided the platform on which the general meeting ran. In the event of technical difficulties, a Telekom engineer was onsite and ready to provide immediate support. In this end this precaution was unnecessary, as the video stream was broadcast without any problems for the entire seven and a half hour program.
Daniel Angst, Technical Sales Support at Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier, said, “We were very pleased to be able to support FC Köln with the hybrid general meeting. We were able to prove that Telekom is a strong partner you can count on not only in the familiar market segments of fixed network, television and mobile communications, but that we can also excite clients with new products and services from the content delivery area. The event was a complete success and we are looking forward to continued collaboration."
The high number of streams was a further indication of the success of the hybrid event. Around 1,500 members followed it for almost the entire seven hours, with an average watch time of 6 hours and 45 minutes. The online stream allowed all FC members to participate in the meeting, and many from abroad – including those from Portugal, Sweden, and the USA –were happy for the opportunity.
First published in BusinessEcho of 1. FC Köln.
