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Learning how to live stream rugby can be a great way to reach rugby fans around the world and grow your grassroots rugby club – even if you’re in a country that doesn’t traditionally play the sport. Here’s our tips and tricks for live streaming your own rugby game, including adding a rugby scoreboard.
The recent rise to stardom of US women’s rugby sevens player Ilona Maher – who has more than eight million followers on Instagram – is just one example of how interest in rugby is growing massively all around the world.
Whether you’re a coach, a team manager, hosting your own tournament, or just a supportive fan, learning how to live stream rugby has several benefits. Not only do you get to share an exciting live sporting event with friends, family and fans everywhere, but you also have the opportunity to increase awareness of the sport.
A stronger online presence through regularly live streamed matches helps you attract new players. It also makes you more attractive to sponsors, because it means more eyes on their logos and a wider reach.
You can also save your live streams to analyze the play-by-play later, help team members progress. Edit footage to use in your team’s social media accounts and reach even more fans. Players on youth teams can also use footage to share with their schools and recruiters.
The most important thing for any successful live stream is a reliable internet connection to avoid disruptions to your live stream. You could tether to your phone for a data connection, make use of a nearby router or wifi network, or best of all, hook up to a lan line if one is available.
Apart from ensuring good connection, the setup you need for rugby live streaming can easily be adjusted to match available manpower and budget. You can produce a live stream on your own, but you will need to get organized upfront. Get your streaming software set up and running so you can focus on the camera work during the game. Using uno, you can update the match score during the game directly from your mobile phone – but it might be tricky to control more detailed graphics.
If possible, it’s always better to have some extra help so you can spread the production duties around and really improve the quality of your livestream.
You can invest in a special sports camera that auto-tracks the action, but it’s not necessary starting out. The most important thing is to find an angle higher than head height. If the pitch doesn’t have a press box, you might have to find a place in the stands that won’t be obstructed by other attendees. Alternatively, you could use a tall camera tripod or stand. Get creative if you have to!
Here are a few extra things to keep in mind to catch that perfect shot:
Help keep fans up to speed on fast-paced action and deliver additional context by adding announcers to your stream. For this, you’ll need a microphone for each announcer and an audio mixer that can feed in to your streaming device. You might also want to add a microphone to capture the ambient sound of the crowd and shouts from the pitch to build atmosphere.
There are several live streaming options, including YouTube and Facebook, or you can broadcast directly on your own website and sell digital tickets to earn additional income.
If your main goal is to reach an audience, make sure you choose the platform they’re most likely to watch on. You can stream on multiple platforms at once with a streaming software like OBS Studio or XSplit.
Rugby live streaming doesn’t usually feel complete without at least a rugby scoreboard to help viewers keep track of the game. Here at overlays.uno, you can find real-time, professionally-designed scoreboards for a vast range of sports, including rugby! You can also add team logos and custom colors to any of our overlays.
Because our overlays can be used online from any device, including your mobile, you don’t have to download multiple ZIP files or buy new apps to use it. Plus, every uno overlay is fully transparent, and won’t require you to take the additional steps of choosing chroma-key background colors.
Use our Standard Rugby Scoreboard to mark how many players are sent to the sin bin with yellow flag and red flag counters. You can use our rugby overlay for rugby union, rugby league, rugby sevens, and touch rugby!
Use our score buttons to quickly mark down points for penalty kicks, tries, and conversions. (Top tip: make scoring even simpler by programming a Stream Deck using our Stream Deck plugin.)
You can boost the production level of your rugby live stream by including different overlays throughout the game. You can thank your sponsors by adding their graphics or logos using one of our sponsor bugs or our image loop overlay.
You can also avoid dead air before kick off by introducing star players with a starting lineup graphic, or discuss upcoming fixtures for the season with one of our fullscreen fixture overlays – like our Champion-themed overlay.
Now that you know how to live stream rugby with our rugby scoreboard, you have to make sure that people tune in! When you promote the date and location of the match, remember to also let people know where they can watch the live footage. Add links and reminders where people can find them. And, if you’re still looking for more tips, drop by our Discord channel and talk to our growing community of sports streamers!
