Basketball is one of the easiest sports to stream well: a small court, steady lighting and everything in one frame. It's also one of the fastest, so the scorebug, stats and breaks all have to keep up. This guide covers where to put the camera in a high school gym, what viewers need on screen, how to fit sponsors into timeouts and who does what on game night.
Permission and the gym connection
Ask your athletic director before you announce a stream. Conferences and state associations often have streaming agreements, and postseason games in many states can stream only to the NFHS Network. Our guide to streaming rights lists the questions to ask.
Gyms are hard on internet. Metal roofs and concrete walls weaken cellular signal, and the school Wi-Fi may block streaming or sit behind a login page. Test upload speed from your camera spot during a real game, with the bleachers full, not at an empty practice. If you can, run an Ethernet cable from a wall jack the school's IT staff has opened for you. If cellular is your only option, test hotspots from more than one carrier, and place the hotspot near a door or window rather than deep inside the gym.
Where to put the camera
The standard spot is high and centered on the half-court line, usually the top row of the bleachers. From there you can show both baskets with a short pan and keep all ten players in frame during half-court sets.
- Pick the side with the scorer's table and benches if the bleachers allow it. You'll catch substitutions and coaches, and fans won't block the bench view. If the only high spot is across the court, that works too.
- Frame from the baseline to just past half court when the ball is in the frontcourt. Leave a little room above the rim so you don't cut off rebounds and lobs.
- Watch for fans standing up. The top row with a wall behind you is ideal.
Set the camera manually. Gym lights often flicker on camera, which shows up as rolling bands. In 60 Hz countries like the US, set the shutter to 1/60 or 1/120. Lock white balance, exposure and focus so the picture doesn't shift or hunt when a team in white runs across the frame.
Audio: gyms echo. Put the announcer on a headset mic close to the mouth, and turn the crowd mic down until you can still hear sneakers and the whistle without the noise burying the call.
Two ways to set it up
Laptop and OBS. A camera with clean HDMI out goes into a capture card and into OBS on a laptop. You build Pregame, Live, Break and Postgame scenes and add the scoreboard as a browser source. Our OBS and YouTube guide walks through it step by step.
Two iPhones. With the ScoreCastr iPhone app (public beta on TestFlight, free during the beta), one phone films and streams with the scoreboard built into the video, and pairs to the match by QR code with no account. Scoring in the app starts with football, with more sports coming, so for basketball the scorekeeper runs the ScoreCastr dashboard in a phone browser at scorecastr.co while the iPhone app streams. A 2-hour stream at 1080p30 uses about 5.4 GB of data. See the two-phone stream for pairing and mounts.
What the scorebug needs to show
Late joiners want the score, the quarter and the clock. Basketball fans also want to know who's in the bonus and how many timeouts are left, because that decides how the last two minutes go.
The basketball scorebug in ScoreCastr tracks team fouls, the bonus, timeouts and a shot clock with presets of 14, 24, 30 and 35 seconds. A few things to get right:
- Only show a shot clock if your games use one. Not every state uses a shot clock in high school. Ask the athletic director or check with your state association, and pick the preset that matches.
- Match the official book on fouls. Bonus rules have changed in recent seasons and some leagues differ. Before tipoff, ask the official scorer how team fouls are counted and when they reset, and keep the scorebug in line with the gym scoreboard.
- The clock is the hard part. A clock tapped by hand drifts from the gym clock during free throws and quick whistles. Glance at the gym clock at every dead ball and correct it. On the Pro plan, the Data Hub can take updates from a scoreboard reader through a webhook, or from a local XML file, which is the fastest option for a running clock.
- Use physical buttons. There's a ready-made basketball profile for the Stream Deck MK.2 and XL, so the scorekeeper can add points and fouls without looking down at a screen.
Live scorebugs are on the free plan. Halftime stats with comparison bars, lineups, player stats and a sponsor spot on the scorebug start on the Starter plan.
Stats worth keeping
Basketball moves too fast for one person to log everything, and StatsCastr uses one stat keeper per account. Choose a high school game (4×8:00) and decide your priorities before tipoff:
- Always: makes and misses on 2-pointers, 3-pointers and free throws, plus fouls. Those give you points per player and shooting numbers.
- If you can keep up: rebounds and turnovers.
- With an experienced keeper: assists, steals and blocks.
Log the play, then credit the player by number. Fix misses at the next timeout or after the final. Families can follow a live box score with no sign-in, and on ScoreCastr Pro you can link the game so player and team stats fill the broadcast graphics. Our guide to putting live stats on your stream covers the link.
Sponsor breaks in a basketball game
High school basketball has no TV timeouts, so you work with the stoppages the game gives you:
| Stoppage | What fits |
|---|---|
| Team timeout | One 30-second spot. Come back before the horn. |
| End of 1st and 3rd quarters | A short break, usually one 30-second spot |
| Halftime | Your main break: 90 or 120 seconds of spots, then highlights or halftime stats |
| Free throws, injuries | No break. Stay live and use the announcer for sponsor reads. |
The common mistake is running a 60-second break in a short timeout and missing the inbound play. With CommercialCue the operator taps 30, 60, 90 or 120 and it plays the spots from Google Drive and returns to the live scene on its own. A countdown turns red at 10 seconds, and Return to Live is always there if play restarts early. More in our sponsor commercials guide.
Crew for game night
| Role | Job in a basketball game |
|---|---|
| Producer / OBS operator | Scenes, breaks, stream health, audio levels |
| Camera operator | Pans with transition play, frames half-court sets |
| Scorekeeper | Score, clock, fouls and timeouts, matched to the gym scoreboard |
| Stats keeper | Shots, free throws and fouls first |
| Announcer | Calls the game, reads sponsors during free throws |
Three people can cover it: camera, scorekeeper and a producer who also announces.
Game-day checklist
- 75 minutes before tipoff: set up the tripod, run power and cables, and tape cables down across walkways.
- 60 minutes: lock shutter, white balance, exposure and focus under the game lights.
- 45 minutes: speed test from the camera spot, open the scoreboard dashboard and the stats game, and check rosters and jersey numbers.
- 30 minutes: private test stream, checked on a phone on cellular. Confirm shot clock and foul rules with the official scorer.
- 15 minutes: go live on the Pregame scene. Set starters in the stats game.
- Tipoff: switch to Live. The scorekeeper checks the clock at every dead ball.
- Halftime: run the long sponsor break, check stream health, fix any stat mistakes.
- Final: show the final score, thank sponsors, end the stream and export the box score.