Local businesses already pay to put their name on the outfield fence and the gym banner. A live stream gives them something better: a spot that plays for every family watching from home. This guide covers where breaks fit in each sport, how to prepare sponsor spots, two ways to play them in OBS, and how to prove to a sponsor that their spot actually ran.
What you can sell
- Break spots. Short video commercials that play at timeouts, between periods and at halftime. These are the core of most packages.
- A sponsor on the scorebug. A logo that rides along on the score graphic all game long. ScoreCastr's graphics set includes a sponsor spot on the scorebug.
- Pregame and postgame mentions. A title card or announcer read before kickoff and after the final.
Package them by season rather than by game. A sponsor who buys "every home game this fall" is easier to manage and to report on than a dozen one-off deals.
Where breaks fit in each sport
The golden rule: never cut away from live action. Use the stoppages the sport already gives you.
| Sport | Natural breaks |
|---|---|
| Football | End of the 1st and 3rd quarters, halftime, timeouts, after scores before the kickoff |
| Basketball | Timeouts, between quarters, halftime |
| Baseball and softball | Between half-innings, pitching changes |
| Volleyball | Between sets, timeouts |
| Soccer | Halftime (play runs continuously otherwise) |
| Hockey | Intermissions between periods |
Short breaks, like a timeout, fit a 30 or 60 second break. Save the 90 and 120 second breaks for halftime and intermissions.
Prepare the spots
- Cut to standard lengths. 30 seconds is the workhorse. Make 60s for premium sponsors.
- Export MP4. It's the format that plays most reliably. MOV, AVI and WebM can work but are worth re-exporting.
- Match the loudness. A spot that's twice as loud as the game is the fastest way to annoy viewers. Normalize the audio on every spot before it goes in the library.
- Name files clearly. Sponsor, version and length, for example MainStreetPizza_Fall_30s.mp4. Future you will thank you.
Option 1: CommercialCue
CommercialCue is built for exactly this job. Your spots stay in Google Drive and CommercialCue plays them in OBS, so you never download and re-upload videos.
Setup, once
- Connect Google Drive with read-only access and map one folder to each break length: 30, 60, 90 and 120 seconds. Your files are never copied or stored.
- Connect OBS (OBS Studio 28 or newer). One click creates the LIVE and AD_PLAYBACK scenes and the media source.
- Add the CommercialCue dock in OBS under Custom Browser Docks, so the break buttons sit right next to your scenes.
CommercialCue checks every file and marks it Ready, Warning, Not Recommended or Unplayable, so you find a bad export before game night, not during it.
On game day
The operator taps a break length. CommercialCue switches to the ad scene, plays the spots in order and returns to the game on its own. A large countdown turns red with 10 seconds to go, and Return to Live is always one tap away if something goes wrong.
It picks the spots for you, too:
- A spot that exactly fits the break length is used first. Otherwise it builds a pod of up to 4 shorter spots.
- The least recently played spots go first, the same spot never plays twice in one break, and two spots from the same advertiser stay apart.
- Campaigns group a sponsor's spots with flight dates and a weight for how often each one plays.
- Break pods let you build a fixed, ordered break ahead of time, for example a halftime pod promised to your top sponsors.
Give volunteers the operator role and they get Live Control and the dock, and nothing else, so nobody accidentally edits the library mid-game.
Option 2: commercial breaks in ScoreCastr
If you already run your scoreboard in ScoreCastr on the Pro plan, it includes simple commercial breaks: sync your ad videos from Dropbox and play them out to OBS with play and pause control. "Go to break" swaps the scorebug for the full scoreboard, so viewers coming back see the score right away.
Which one to use? ScoreCastr's breaks are handy for a single crew that wants everything in one dashboard. CommercialCue is the better fit when ads are a real revenue line: automatic spot selection, campaigns, break pods, operator roles and sponsor reporting.
Prove it ran: proof of play
Sponsors renew when they can see what they paid for. CommercialCue logs every break with its requested and actual length and its start and end time, and you can open any break to see each spot's planned and actual time. Export the break log to CSV, and run a campaign report filtered by campaign and dates to see breaks run, total plays and each spot's share of plays.
A simple monthly email to each sponsor goes a long way: games streamed, number of times their spot played, and a link to a replay. Add your stream's viewer numbers from your platform's analytics.
Break-day checklist
- New spots exported as MP4, normalized and named, and in the right Drive folder.
- Library rescanned, with no files flagged Unplayable.
- Campaign flight dates set for this week's sponsors.
- OBS connected and the dock open. One test break run before going live.
- The operator knows the plan: which stoppages get a break and how long.
- After the game: export the proof of play logs and file them by sponsor.
Mistakes to avoid
- Cutting away during live play. Missing a touchdown for a commercial loses viewers and annoys sponsors, who don't want to be the reason.
- Unbalanced audio. Normalize every spot.
- Overselling. Ten spots in a 60 second timeout doesn't work. Sell what your breaks can actually hold.
- No reporting. Without proof of play, renewals come down to a handshake. With it, they're an easy yes.