Behind the Stream: How Digital Samba Powered Eurovision 2025

Just a year ago, our long-term client and partner, the Dutch online event platform Let’s Get Digital (LGD), approached us with a truly exciting proposal: to power the Eurovision streaming of all rehearsals for the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) 2025, delivering a high-quality Eurovision live stream to the international media audience. 

Now, following this year’s edition of the iconic event, which took place from 13 to 17 May in Basel, Switzerland, we received the following words of praise from Bas Krijgsman, CEO of LGD: “I was positively surprised on what the Digital Samba team was able to set up and that you delivered an end-to-end stream on a quality level I didn’t think was technically possible!”

Like every year, media interest was immense, and a large number of accredited journalists from across Europe and beyond gathered to cover this celebrated festival of music, culture, and spectacle. To provide in-depth coverage and meaningful reporting ahead of the grand finale on Saturday, 17 May, journalists needed reliable access to live Eurovision broadcast feeds of rehearsals and press conferences throughout the week. 

This requirement presented a significant technical and infrastructural challenge—a true test of our Digital Samba video conferencing API. In order to be officially considered for Eurovision Song Contest streaming, our platform had to undergo stringent technical vetting and demonstrate rock-solid performance under peak loads, all while ensuring robust security. The experience highlighted just how critical secure, low-latency streaming is for high-profile, international coverage, especially when hundreds of media representatives have to connect securely and effortlessly to the ESC live stream.

Eurovision is not only a cultural celebration but also a politically sensitive event, where voting patterns may reflect diplomatic relations or regional alliances. As such, Eurovision stream feeds have historically been targeted by cyberattacks aimed at disrupting the broadcast or influencing public sentiment. Delivering a stable and secure stream under these conditions required far more than technical excellence—it demanded proven cybersecurity resilience.

To meet this challenge, Digital Samba underwent a comprehensive penetration testing process, simulating real-world attack scenarios carried out by certified ethical hackers. This pentest, carried out by Expert Solutions, evaluated everything from our network defences and authentication mechanisms to how our system handled data access and encryption.

To be officially accepted as the streaming platform for the Eurovision Song Contest 2025, passing this penetration test was a mandatory requirement. Digital Samba successfully met all security criteria, demonstrating the strength of our encryption, secure infrastructure, and real-time data protection capabilities. This not only reassured the Eurovision organisers of our platform’s safety and compliance with strict European data protection laws, but it also ensured that hundreds of media representatives could rely on smooth and uninterrupted Eurovision live stream coverage—no matter where they were.

During the Eurovision Song Contest 2025, Digital Samba faced and overcame a subtle yet critical technical challenge linked to SSRC reuse in RTP streams. When broadcasters like OBS stop and restart a stream, they often reuse the same SSRC (Synchronization Source identifier)—a 32-bit value used to uniquely identify media sources. This posed a problem in scaling environments using media servers like Janus, which enforce strict validation on RTP packet sequencing. If a stream resumes with a reused SSRC but resets its packet count, Janus’s Streaming plugin may ignore the stream until the numbering aligns again—delaying playback for subscribers. 

Digital Samba engineers resolved this by dynamically overwriting the SSRC during RTP forwarding, leveraging Janus’s support for this via the ssrc field in the VideoRoom plugin. This ensured immediate stream availability for all viewers, maintaining a smooth, uninterrupted broadcast experience during one of Europe’s most-watched events.

The successful execution of the Eurovision live stream was a testament to the expertise, agility, and dedication of the Digital Samba team. From navigating complex technical requirements to overcoming real-time broadcasting hurdles under pressure, our team ensured that every media representative and viewer enjoyed a flawless Eurovision streaming experience. With minimal turnaround time and maximum reliability, we delivered a fully scalable, secure, and high-quality Eurovision Song Contest streaming solution. 

To sum it up, the partnership with Let’s Get Digital marked not only a milestone in technical achievement but also a shared vision of redefining what's possible in modern event broadcasting.