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Live Streaming by Industry, Live Streaming Hardware, Live Streaming Software, Featured Athletics 1

3 people sitting on a couch watching a football game

How to Add a Scoreboard to Your Sports Live Stream

Arguably, the most important part of recreating the in-person experience of a game is letting your viewers see the score. If fans don't know who's winning or losing, your game's going to be tough to follow — especially for people who start watching in the middle of your broadcast.

This is why it's crucial for sports broadcasters to find a way to add a scoreboard to their live streams. In this blog, we cover a few ways you can do it.

Consider Your Streaming Platform

The ability to add a sports scoreboard to your live stream depends on the platform you're using. If you're streaming with Facebook Live, YouTube Live, or another social media platform, you won't be able to add a scoreboard without extra production equipment.

This is because social platforms only distribute your streams and don't allow for scoreboard overlay software or other production elements. But if you're using a platform like BoxCast, which still lets you multistream to social media destinations, you have several options for integrating your scoreboard — while maintaining a relatively simple production setup.

Add a Scoreboard to Your Stream with BoxCast

BoxCast’s Scoreboard Overlays feature allows you to overlay a scoreboard onto your live stream before sending it to your streaming destinations (like Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Twitter, and your website).

Tablet screen showing a football game with a live stream scoreboard overlay displayed

The resulting scoreboard overlay will look similar to the one shown above (with some customization options for placement, team colors, etc.). You have three different options for scoreboard data ingestion:

Scoreboard Assist

Combined with our Automatic Scoreboard Overlays, Scoreboard Assist is the easiest way to capture, customize, and provide live score streaming to your sports viewers. Its advanced Dashboard diagnostics allow you to monitor your streams, collect data, and troubleshoot quality issues in real time.

Scoreboard Assist seamlessly integrates with almost every major scoreboard live stream brand and controller on the market. All you have to do is connect it to your scoreboard controller and your BoxCast encoder. You can connect wirelessly or with wired options, since it comes with all the required cabling and adapters. Then just configure your settings in the BoxCast Dashboard and you’re ready to go live!

With all it has to offer, Scoreboard Assist can significantly improve both your sports broadcasting and viewer experience — in short sprints — er, streams — as well as in the long run.

 

Sportzcast Integration

As another option, we've partnered with Sportzcast to integrate scoreboard data directly through their ScoreBOT interface, which can be linked to a wide variety of scoreboards.

Learn how to integrate BoxCast and the Sportzcast ScoreBOT here.

Sportzcast box next to a computer screen showing live stream of a hockey game with scoreboard overlay

Manual Scoreboard Controls

Don't have an actual scoreboard to integrate with your live stream? We also offer manual scoreboard controls that let you update the score directly through the BoxCast Dashboard or Broadcaster iOS app.

Broadcaster app displaying manual scoreboard controls

Here's how it works:

  • Start by scheduling a broadcast.
  • When you get to the Scoreboard section, select the sport you'd like to broadcast.
  • To activate the manual scoreboard option, go to Scoreboard Make and select manual.
  • Next, fill out the Home and Away team settings.
  • The video overlay option lets you put the scoreboard at the top or bottom of the screen.
  • Now, finish scheduling.

If you click on the broadcast, you’ll notice you have a scoreboard control button. This is where you'll adjust all the scoreboard controls during the game.

You can also control these settings with an iPhone or an iPad using our Broadcaster app.

Pro Tip: If you’re always broadcasting for the same home team, go to Settings. Find Preferences, then Scoreboard, and select Sports Configuration. There you can change your default theme settings.

If you have questions about setting up your manual scoreboard, check out our Support page to view help guides and chat with our team.

Final Thoughts + Further Reading

Scoreboards are just one important element of sports live streaming. Here are some other articles you might find useful to live stream sports and other athletic events: