They do need the ddos protection tho. Not sure whats current lyn rank on alexa but I'm guessing top 20 locally? That should attract many bots and ddoser and whatsnot. Cloudflare ddos protection is superb. No need to reinvent the wheel when the tools is already there.

ya, but usually server can handle average ddos, wait until really serious then only get flare .. not sure how their free account's protection offer

well, here's my attempt at trying to answer this seriously (with my own speculation)

well first of all, setting up a server has costs, buying hardware, having admins to manage it
plus you need to setup software, keep it up to date, upgrade new hardware when the time comes
if you say just directly host the site on 1 webserver to connect to, well it'll go down pretty quickly with the traffic that the site gets, or when someone tries to ddos it
and if you are using multiple, well management becomes a hastle and costs go up
plus international users would experience a slower site

cloudflare has a free tier (which I doubt this site is using that, hopefully not), but even then, its easy and cheap to just put cloudflare on, and you enjoy their features like ddos management, caching, global cdn, plus other cool features like always online

but to sum it up and give you your answer

(I assume) It is (probably) cheaper and easier for LYN staff to use cloudflare instead of doing it themselves.

See.. THIS is the type of professional, well-mannered, matured, non-bias and constructive answer I was looking for unlike the condescending one from the other dude.

So to @PRSXFENG, I thank you for your time and effort in answering this.

This post ends here.