Red Bull Wololo: El Reinado

A medieval castle. The biggest AoE event to date. And a community that doesn't forgive if you lose the vibe.

Red Bull Wololo is the defining competitive event for the Age of Empires community. El Reinado was the most ambitious edition yet: a multi-day tournament held at Castillo de Almodóvar del Río in Spain — a medieval fortress used as a filming location for Game of Thrones. The production scale was enormous. The venue was not designed for it.

Hauling broadcast equipment up a one-lane mountain road to the top of a medieval castle. Managing an international production crew across multiple languages and working cultures. Building a world-class broadcast from a structure built for defense, not entertainment.

But the hardest challenge wasn't logistical — it was tonal. Wololo's identity is built on community, comedy, and charm. The Age of Empires audience shows up because the events feel like theirs — fun, irreverent, full of personality. The temptation with a castle, this budget, and this scale was to go epic. To make it feel like a Hollywood production.

That would have been the wrong choice.

Scale the production. Protect the personality.

The strategic decision was restraint: use the castle as a spectacular backdrop, but never let the production spectacle override the brand personality that makes Wololo feel like Wololo. The community's relationship with this event is built on accessibility and humor — not grandeur.

We designed the full show flow — the broadcast structure, pacing, and shoulder content strategy — around this principle. The shoulder content wasn't filler between matches. It was the connective tissue that kept the event feeling human at a scale that could easily have felt corporate.

The most significant design decision was building live audience choice into the broadcast. At planned moments throughout the show, viewers voted on which shoulder content piece would air next. The audience wasn't just watching — they were shaping the show in real time. We pre-produced multiple content options for each decision point, so production quality never dropped regardless of what the audience chose. The audience felt agency. The production maintained control.

That's choice architecture applied to live entertainment — the behavioral design principle of structuring decisions so every option leads to a good outcome while the person choosing feels ownership of the result.

A castle, an international crew, and a community that expects to be seen

Talent anchored the production personality. Riley Knight brought deep knowledge of the AoE community and natural hosting warmth. Soe Gschwind brought broadcast expertise and women's representation to a scene that needed it. Both were chosen not just for skill, but for what their presence signaled to the community about who this event was for.

I developed the full show flow, conceived and produced the shoulder content strategy, and managed the creative pipeline from concept through execution. Director Frank Samson led the live production. We worked directly with Red Bull Media House's production team — a relationship built across multiple previous Red Bull events.

The logistical challenges — the mountain road, the castle's medieval infrastructure, the international crew coordination — became part of the story rather than obstacles to hide. Every production constraint was solved by asking: "does this serve the community's experience, or just the broadcast's polish?"

The biggest event in the game's history — because it stayed true to the community

El Reinado set the all-time viewership record for Age of Empires II at 85,000 peak concurrent viewers, surpassing every previous Red Bull Wololo and community event. The Age of Empires I portion pulled an additional 83,459 viewers.

The record wasn't set by going bigger. It was set by going deeper — into the community's identity, into the comedy and warmth that defines this scene, into a production philosophy that treated audience participation as a design problem worth solving rather than a checkbox to tick.

The audience vote mechanic proved something: structured choices within a controlled framework create a feeling of ownership without sacrificing quality. Every option was pre-produced to the same standard. The agency was real. The risk was designed away.