How to live stream a game to Twitch from your phone

Twitch is a natural home for club teams, rec leagues, college club sports and streamers who already have a channel and a community in chat. It works differently from YouTube and Facebook: every stream is public, chat is the center of the experience, and the stream key lives in a different place. This guide covers the Twitch side and how to stream from an iPhone with a live scoreboard in the picture.

Is Twitch the right platform

Pick Twitch when your viewers are already there or when live chat is the point. If your audience is mostly parents and grandparents, a school Facebook Page or YouTube channel usually reaches more of them. You don't have to choose only one: you can send one stream to Twitch, YouTube and Facebook at once with Restream.

Check rights before streaming a school game. Many state associations and conferences have streaming agreements, and in many states postseason games can stream only to the NFHS Network. Ask your athletic director or state association first, and read our guide to streaming rights. Also check your school's policy on student video, because Twitch streams can't be made private or unlisted.

Find the Twitch stream key

Log in to Twitch on a computer or phone browser and open the Creator Dashboard. Go to Settings, then Stream. Your primary stream key is at the top, hidden by default, with a Copy button and a Reset button.

• Never share the key. Anyone who has it can broadcast to your channel. Don't paste it into group chats or put it on a shared spreadsheet.
• The key doesn't change on its own. Paste it into the phone once and it works every game, until you reset it.
• If it leaks, reset it on the same page and paste the new key into the app. The old key stops working immediately.
• Hide it on camera. If you stream the setup process, or screen-record a tutorial, the key is visible the moment you click Show.

Twitch's key page doesn't show a server URL, because Twitch expects streaming software to pick its ingest server. For an app where you paste both, use Twitch's ingest server address from Twitch's help site. The commonly documented one is rtmp://live.twitch.tv/app.

Set the stream info before you go live

On Twitch, the title and category decide who finds you. Set them in Stream Manager (Edit Stream Info) before the phone starts sending:

Twitch shows your channel as live the moment the key receives video, so there's no "click Go live" step like Facebook or YouTube. Whatever the phone sends goes out. Have the camera on something sensible (the field, a pregame wide shot) before you start streaming.

Chat, past broadcasts and the schedule

A few channel settings are worth setting once, before game one:

• Moderation. Add a trusted parent or team staffer as a chat moderator, and turn on Twitch's automatic chat filtering. Followers-only chat cuts down drive-by trolls. The camera person can't moderate; they're holding a phone.
• Past broadcasts. Twitch only keeps your streams as videos if storing past broadcasts is turned on in the Stream settings, and it keeps them for a limited time. If families will want to rewatch, turn it on and download or highlight the games you want to keep.
• Music. Copyrighted music from the stadium PA can cause problems on Twitch, especially in saved videos. Keep the phone mic away from the speakers during songs.
• Schedule. Post your season on the channel's schedule from the Creator Dashboard so followers know when you'll be live. There's no per-game scheduled event with its own link the way YouTube does it; your channel URL is the link every time.

Set up the ScoreCastr app

The ScoreCastr iPhone app is in public beta on TestFlight, free during the beta, with Android coming later. It runs one match on two phones: one keeps score, the other films and streams with the scoreboard built into the video using the match's template and team colors.

1. Create the match on the scoring phone.
2. Pair the filming phone by scanning the match's QR code. It doesn't need an account.
3. Paste the Twitch ingest server and your stream key into the filming phone's stream settings. There's no Twitch sign-in; the key is enough.
4. Frame the shot in landscape, set the zoom (0.5x to 3x), check the mic level and confirm the scorebug switch is on.

Scoring in the app is football first, with more sports coming. For other sports, the scorekeeper can open the ScoreCastr dashboard at scorecastr.co in a phone browser while the iPhone app streams. The two-phone stream guide covers roles, mounts and pairing in detail.

The app streams 1080p at 30fps, about 6 Mbps, and a two-hour game uses about 5.4 GB of data. It lowers the bitrate automatically when the upload struggles, recovers when it can, and reconnects if the connection drops. Phones get hot on cellular while charging, so shade the phone and use a good power source.

Test without an audience

Because Twitch has no unlisted mode, your test stream is public. Keep it low-key:

• Set the title to "Test stream" and the category to something your followers won't browse, then run the test at an off hour.
• If your followers get notified when you go live, warn them in chat or on your socials first.
• Stream at least 20 minutes from the actual venue, and watch on another phone on cellular. Check that the score updates a few seconds after each tap and that the audio isn't clipping.
• Open Stream Manager during the test to see how the stream looks to viewers.

Game-day checklist

• Week before: rights confirmed, moderators added, past broadcasts setting checked, test stream done.
• Day before: phones updated, TestFlight build current, server and key saved in the app, power banks charged.
• 60 minutes out: mount the filming phone, speed test the upload, pair by QR code.
• 30 minutes out: set title, category and tags in Stream Manager.
• Start: point the camera at the field, then start streaming. You're live instantly.
• During: scorekeeper scores, moderator watches chat, camera person watches the phone's battery and heat.
• Final: hold the final score, thank chat and sponsors, stop the stream in the app.