This case study explores how The Famous Group used Red5 Pro to transform its proprietary fan engagement offering, Vixi Suite. Facing latency and scalability challenges with their previous provider, they adopted Red5’s real-time streaming technology to achieve sub-250ms latency, double video resolution, and cut infrastructure costs. The result was a seamless experience for stadium audiences and a more efficient backend system.
The Famous Group is a world-renowned creative technology company specializing in mixed reality and innovative fan experiences for sports, entertainment, and retail. Their work includes 20 Super Bowls, WWE, the NFL, Live Nation, the NBA finals, NCAA Final Four, Pepsi, NHL All-Star Weekend, AT&T, and more than 150 professional sports teams and venues.
What The Famous Group does:
Software Development
Mixed Reality and Augmented Reality
Content, Creative and Production
Proprietary, Patented Fan Engagement Technology
Virtual Events and Real-Time Rendered Production
Experiential Activations
Challenge
The Famous Group needed a more scalable and flexible live streaming solution to power high-profile interactive displays and event content across sports stadiums, entertainment venues, and retail environments.
Key requirements included:
Ultra-low latency streaming: Sub-250ms latency was essential to maintain seamless real-time synchronization during live events.
Support for 24 or more concurrent real-time streams: Previously the same load required separate signaling servers with network clustering, this increased EC2 usage and complexity.
AWS-native deployment: A self-hosted solution within their AWS environment to maintain control over infrastructure and costs.
Dynamic compositing capabilities: Including on-the-fly content switching, graphic overlays, and stream replacements when participants dropped.
Collaborative partnership: A partner who could provide hands-on support, early access to new features, and help co-sell joint solutions.
These constraints and goals led The Famous Group to Red5 and its Red5 Pro live streaming server software, which met both their technical and strategic needs.
Solution
Why The Famous Group Chose Red5
The Famous Group explored several WebRTC solutions before selecting Red5, ultimately choosing it for four key reasons:
Smooth integration: A seamless migration process and clear documentation made implementation easy and efficient.
Flexible and robust technology: From the beginning, Red5 stood out as a powerful and adaptable solution capable of handling scale and technical demands.
Strong industry reputation: The partnership was reinforced by positive community feedback and an immediate connection after meeting the Red5 team at an industry event.
Hands-on support: During the trial phase, Red5 provided direct assistance, delivered custom builds, and ensured The Famous Group had everything in place before committing. That level of support played a major role in the decision.
About Vixi Suite
Vixi Suite is The Famous Group’s fan engagement platform designed to bring audiences closer to the action through real-time, interactive experiences. Built to enhance live events, the suite includes multiple products that give fans and event hosts new ways to connect, broadcast, and participate in the experience whether in the venue or remotely.
Red5’s ultra-low latency streaming technology was integrated into the following offering:
Vixi Live: Allows fans at in-person events to live stream themselves directly to a stadium or arena video board using only their phone. Participants scan a QR code to join, making the experience quick and accessible. Enhances fan engagement by letting individuals see themselves on the big screen in real time. Offers value to advertisers by directing fans to sponsored landing pages at the end of each activation.
Vixi Live, built by The Famous Group and now powered by Red5, has been part of the last 3 Super Bowls.
Vixi Stream: Empowers event hosts to live stream from anywhere without relying on traditional RF camera infrastructure. Removes the limitations of antenna range, enabling feeds from previously inaccessible locations such as tailgates, locker rooms, local bars, or behind-the-scenes areas. Expands creative possibilities for event production while reducing technical friction.
Locker room footage from a Los Angeles Kings hockey game, recorded using Vixi Stream softwarepowered by Red5
Vixi Home: Extends the live event experience beyond the venue by enabling fans to join the action from anywhere. By scanning a QR code shown during the broadcast, fans can stream real-time video from their mobile device directly to the venue’s video board. Creates a powerful sense of connection and participation—whether fans are watching from home, a bar, or across the globe.
A fan watching from home is selected to go live on the arena’s video board—bringing remote audiences into the heart of the action in real time.
The Vixi Suite also includes
Capture (tools that feature your audience):
– Mosaic: Aggregate user generated content with a 2D display of the participants’ selfies directly from within the Vixi Suite – Reels: Participants can submit a short form video message of themselves directly from their phone. – Messages: allows participants to send text messages to any display. You can add custom fields like name, email, seat number in addition to their messages providing producers with additional engagement options during the event. – Polling & Trivia: Create and display multiple choice questions that the audience can respond to via their mobile device and get real-time responses. Connect multiple questions in a sequence to create a trivia experience.
Magic (tools that transform, animate, entertain):
– Photo Magic: using our AI powered image generator, producers can modify participant photos with dynamic effects and personalized elements. The transformed images can be displayed directly on the video boards to create an unforgettable atmosphere for the audience in-venue. – Replay Magic: Enhance your highlights, intros or other videos with this quick turnaround tool that allows producers to upload any video file and choose from style or type in prompts to create unique video effects. Jump bath and forth between reality and magic in a single video. – Groov: Animates uploaded photos, bringing the participants’ images to life on the big screen. The animated versions of participants’ can be seen chanting along to prompts, and singing and dancing along to music, adding a fun and interactive element to events. – Question Magic: Creates clever questions and answers for our Polls & Trivia feature.
How Does Vixi Live Work
In this study, we’ll explain how Red5 is integrated into one of the solutions, Vixi Live, from a technical perspective, since Vixi Stream and Vixi Home work similarly.
Deployment diagram showing how Vixi Live, powered by Red5 Pro and hosted on AWS, works
To explain how the solution works, Red5 Pro clustering was deployed on Amazon EC2 instances. Red5’s Mixer technology allowed them to efficiently mix and manage 24 or more real-time video streams with sub-250ms latency, while keeping infrastructure costs under control by not using as many extra AWS EC2 instances.
To support The Famous Group’s evolving use case, Red5 offered early access to pre-release Mixer technology. This helped the team build and test new capabilities during their broader system rewrite. They used Red5 Pro’s APIs to dynamically manage stream composition, insert graphics or placeholders when feeds were unavailable, and adapt layouts in real time.
Beyond technology, Red5 collaborated closely with The Famous Group’s technical team throughout implementation. Together, they resolved critical bugs, improved system performance, and fine-tuned Red5 Pro’s APIs.
This partnership approach extended to joint business development, including co-selling initiatives in new regions. The result was not only a technical upgrade, but also a strategic alliance designed to support The Famous Group’s long-term growth and innovation goals.
In addition to using Red5 Pro deployed on EC2 instances, The Famous Group leverages many other AWS services for the Vixi Suite including:
Secrets
Lambda
Load Balancer Controller
Route53
CloudWatch
EventBridge
S3
VPC
Elastic IPs
Security Groups
IAM Policies
Benefits and Results
By using Red5 Pro, The Famous Group significantly improved streaming performance and reduced infrastructure costs, enabling smoother operations at scale.
Key outcomes:
Achieved sub-250ms latency: Enabled real-time video streaming in stadiums so in-person attendees could interact instantly and stay engaged.
Doubled video resolution: Improved video quality for tens of thousands of concurrent users by increasing output resolution 2x.
Reduced infrastructure costs: Cut EC2 instance usage by 50%. Previously required both a gateway and a media server per stream. Now, only a single media server is needed.
Expanded business opportunities: Active co-selling with Red5 opened doors to new markets.
Client Testimonials
We’re excited to be working with the team at Red5. Their deep expertise with AWS has been a huge asset, but what really sets them apart is the relationship. In this industry, the tech matters—but trust, communication, and a shared dedication to quality are what make partnerships like this invaluable.”
– CJ Davis, CTO at The Famous Group
Red5 vaulted our streaming service to the next level. Their AWS and WebRTC savvy team transformed a complex migration into a seamless, low-latency go-live, delivering results in days, not weeks. Just as important, their partnership style shines: clear communication, proactive problem-solving, and an unwavering focus on the end-user experience. With Red5, we didn’t just upgrade technology; we gained a trusted ally.”
– Amber Lincoln, Head of Engineering at The Famous Group
Conclusion
The Famous Group’s migration to Red5 Pro helped solve their key challenges: lowering latency, improving video resolution, and scaling interactive experiences without overloading infrastructure. By replacing their older architecture with Red5’s flexible solution, they reduced costs, enhanced fan engagement, and laid the foundation for new business opportunities through co-selling and joint development.
