RTÉ to spend €30m to continue video streaming services from 2028

Any successful supplier should expect to work within the 'existing RTÉ ecosystem' while any changes to that system would be carried out via 'incremental modernisation' rather than via a wholesale change to the platforms in place. File picture

RTÉ is to spend €30m on its video streaming services from 2028, according to a newly issued contract for tender.

The broadcaster has sought expressions of interest from suppliers to provide “technology solutions” for the continued “operation, evolution, and support of the RTÉ’s video streaming products from 2028 onwards”.

Those solutions will include the management of content, rights and entitlements and the provision of “operational support services” for RTÉ’s existing systems, it said.

Any successful supplier should expect to work within the “existing RTÉ ecosystem” while any changes to that system would be carried out via “incremental modernisation” rather than via a wholesale change to the platforms in place.

The tender specifically states that an “end-to-end replacement of RTÉ’s existing video-streaming infrastructure” will not be required, while long-term exclusivity arrangements which would “prevent RTÉ from evolving individual components independently” will likewise not be included as part of the contract.

Notice services are to run for seven years from the end of July 2026, though the tender stipulates that the support in question will run from 2028.

RTÉ’s primary online video portal is the RTÉ player, via which it carries livestreaming of its primary television stations, catch-up streams of programmes already broadcast, and certain tv boxset and movie offerings.

The player had come in for repeated criticism in recent years due to the standard of its interface and reliability, particularly when streaming high-profile large-audience events such as the GAA All-Irelands or the Late Late Toy Show.

The new tender documents note that RTÉ Player “had a record year in 2024 with over 142 million streams”.

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The broadcaster is currently entering the second year of its three-year, €725m Government bailout after its finances collapsed in the wake of a series of scandals which rocked the station from the summer of 2023 onwards.

Last January, media minister Patrick O’Donovan said that under “no circumstances” would he ask the taxpayer to pay for a second bailout when the current ring-fenced funding arrangement ends next year, warning that RTÉ would have to grow its commercial revenues going forward.

“That support is not infinite,” Mr O’Donovan said at the time.