A Simple Look at Livestreaming Events

In recent years, and especially over the pandemic, livestreaming has become a necessity in event production. This method allows events to be broadcasted for a live at-home audience to tune into without having to step foot into the venue. Upon first dabbling in this scene, many individuals had to jump through the hoops of poor internet connection, a lagging broadcast, or other issues that arose. But after having adjusted to the best practices, livestreaming has become a universally-recognized approach to producing events for a remote audience. For first-timers, it might seem overwhelming to pull this off, but it is much simpler than it might appear.

What Equipment Do You Need For a Livestream?

A great way to ensure you have all the proper equipment necessary to livestream an event is to partner with an AV equipment supplier. If you’re looking at your own equipment, however, you’ll want to ensure you have some of the following items: microphones, cameras, internet connection, a streaming site and a video encoder. You might also benefit from utilizing a tripod, power strips and other basic commodities that help form the bigger picture.

Where Should You Livestream It Online?

All of your preliminary steps will add up to nothing if you do not have a streaming option chosen ahead of time. Nowadays, many social networking sites have livestreaming capabilities if you do not have a provider on a website you own. Many individuals take advantage of this service on YouTube and Facebook, broadcasting to a large public audience or utilizing the feature in private groups to ensure that virtual attendees who bought tickets will have exclusive access to the event.

Instagram Live is another livestreaming platform, but it has some limitations and isn’t set up to support larger professional events in the same way that YouTube and Facebook are.

Always Test It Out Before the Event

Upon setting everything up in the event venue, you’ll want to allow time for you and your team to test out your livestream. You can do so by streaming to a private destination rather than to the public. This helps ensure that your cameras, sound system and internet connection are all working properly and will perform well when the actual event begins. It is best to test this out and solve any problems prior to the event in order to avoid any possible hitches when it really matters.

What Are the Benefits of Livestreaming Your Event?

There are countless benefits to livestreaming your event, many of which arose throughout the pandemic. One overarching theme of livestreams is that they can broadcast your event to a wider audience. Each time you host an event, there are likely groups of individuals who would have liked to attend but were unable to for whatever reason. Streaming your event will showcase it to larger audiences and allow it to live in an online space where it can be rewatched in the future, which is especially beneficial if online attendees are unable to watch it at the chosen broadcasting time.

If your event is solely online and has no “studio audience” of sorts, this can save your organization money, cutting on venue costs, catering, brochures and more. Going forward, it is predicted that many events will continue to be held online, even past the pandemic.

Because of these predictions, it is essential that organizations invest in or partner with a company that will provide them with the necessary gear to produce a successful livestream. While in-person events have a clear nostalgia to them, livestreaming has many apparent benefits and continues to introduce interactive measures that make attendees feel like they are at the event in person.