A tournament weekend is not one big game. It's a dozen or more small productions stacked on top of each other, on several courts, with a crew that has to stay sharp from the first serve on Saturday morning to the final on Sunday afternoon. This guide covers how to build the schedule, staff each court, set call times that hold up, run several scoreboards at once and get everyone home with all the gear.
Start with rights and the schedule
Tournaments are where streaming rights get complicated. The host school, the league, the conference or the state association may each have a say, and many state associations route postseason games to the NFHS Network only. Confirm with the tournament director and your athletic director which games you can stream and where, before you promise anything to families. Our guide to streaming rights covers the questions to ask.
Then get the bracket or game schedule from the tournament director as early as possible, and ask two things they often forget to tell you:
- How games advance. Pool play times are fixed, but bracket games depend on results. Know which slots are "winner of game 4 vs. winner of game 5" so you can staff the slot without knowing the teams.
- What happens when games run long. Some tournaments start the next game at a fixed time. Others start it a set number of minutes after the previous one ends. That changes how much buffer your crew needs between games.
Build the weekend as one event
Put the whole tournament in one place so nobody is working from a stale copy. In CrewdUp, create a multi-day event for the tournament and add each game inside it. The event holds what's shared: the venue and address, the timezone, the internet source, the production software, the RTMP server and stream key, and the venue, association, producer and coordinating producer contacts. The games hold what changes: the matchup, the court and the start time.
If the schedule arrives as a spreadsheet, bulk upload the games from CSV instead of typing them. When bracket results come in, update the game rows so the crew always sees the current matchups.
Staff each court like its own show
The mistake most crews make is staffing the tournament instead of staffing the courts. Each live court needs its own small crew, and that crew needs to be the same people all day so they settle into a rhythm.
| Position | How many | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tournament producer | 1 for the venue | Owns the schedule, the streams and the problems. Not tied to a court. |
| Camera / stream operator | 1 per court | Runs the camera and the encoder for that court. |
| Scorekeeper | 1 per court | Runs that court's scoreboard dashboard and nothing else. |
| Play-by-play | Per game or per court | Optional on early rounds. Assign talent to the games that matter most. |
| Floater | 1 per 2–3 courts | Covers meal breaks, swaps a battery, fixes a cable, fills a no-show. |
Save these as a crew position template so you can apply them to the next tournament. Be aware that applying a template in CrewdUp replaces the event's existing positions, so apply it first and then customize. CrewdUp keeps talent on a separate roster from crew, and talent can be assigned by game, which suits tournaments where your best announcer only calls the semifinals and the final.
For more on positions, invites and confirmations, see our guide to staffing and scheduling a broadcast crew.
Set call times that hold up
A single call time for a whole weekend doesn't work. Set them per day, and per court if courts start at different times:
- Day one call: 90 minutes before the first game. You're running power, taping cables and testing every court's connection.
- Day two call: 45 to 60 minutes before the first game, if gear stayed set up overnight in a locked gym. Longer if you had to strike it.
- Late courts: crew on a court that starts at noon doesn't need to arrive at 7 a.m. Give them their own call.
Always enter call times in the venue's timezone, especially for a team traveling in from across a timezone line. Tell crew to confirm through the email invite links, so the board shows who's actually coming.
Plan meals, breaks and the long day
Ten hours on a folding chair wears people down, and tired crews miss scores. Build breaks into the plan:
- Rotate meals with the floater. Look at the schedule for gaps on each court and assign the floater to cover each crew for 20 to 30 minutes.
- Order food in advance and know where it's being delivered. Put meal times and the food location in the event's production notes.
- Water, chargers and a quiet spot. Phones and laptops die faster than people do on a long day.
- Swap scorekeepers after a few games if you have the people. Accuracy drops late in the day.
Run several scoreboards at once
Every court needs its own scoreboard on its own stream. In ScoreCastr, create one match per game. Each match has its own dashboard and its own overlay link, so the scorekeeper on court 2 can never accidentally change the score on court 1.
- Create the matches ahead of time, with team names, colors and logos, so the scorekeeper just opens the next one.
- Give each court's encoder the right overlay link. In OBS, add it as a 1920×1080 browser source. Label the scene or source with the court number.
- Send each scorekeeper only their court's dashboard links. A printed sheet per court, in game order, is hard to beat.
- Swap the overlay link between games, or reuse a scene and update the source, so the next game's graphics are ready before warmups end.
Check how many matches your plan covers before the weekend. Free covers 1 active match, Starter 10, Pro 25 and Enterprise is unlimited. ScoreCastr doesn't build brackets, so keep the bracket itself with the tournament director and update matchups as results come in.
Connections and gear for several courts
Several streams from one gym multiply your upload needs. Test the venue internet with every stream running at once, not one at a time. A gym that handles one stream may choke on four. If you can, run a wired connection to each encoder and keep a cellular backup ready. Our guide to streaming with bad internet has fallback options.
Pack each court as its own kit: camera, tripod, encoder, cables, power strip, tape. When each court has a matching case, setup is faster and teardown tells you right away if something is missing.
Tournament weekend checklist
- Two weeks out: rights confirmed, schedule in hand, event and games created, positions assigned and invites sent.
- One week out: every court staffed with a confirmed crew, floaters assigned, meals ordered.
- Two days out: matches created with team colors and logos, overlay links mapped to courts, per-court sheets printed.
- Day one call: power, cables, cameras, connection test with all streams live.
- Between games: next match loaded, overlay checked, bracket results entered.
- End of day one: secure the gear, charge everything, confirm day two call times.
- Final: strike each court's kit back into its own case and check it against the list.