Covering Competitive Events for Fun and Profit: The Bare Minimum

I’ve recently become really interested in Flesh and Blood, a trading card game made by Legend Story Studios. The game has gained some considerable traction since its release in 2019, in spite of supply issues and covid disrupting its arrival early on. There are a lot of reasons for why its doing well, (my personal interest was sparked due to it being significantly cheaper than Magic the Gathering) but there’s one thing for certain that ISN’T drawing in the crowds: Event Coverage.

Legend Story Studios has a series of Pro Tour events under the umbrella of “The Calling,” with coverage for these events being largely done by the teams who are playing, sponsored by various stores and brands that are famous among the TCG community. Watching games of Flesh and Blood is incredibly exciting; a lot of amazingly close games with spectacular upsets and clever plays. Unfortunately, it can be hard to follow some of it when watching live events because of how incredibly unprofessional the coverage is. But rather than whine and complain about how terrible the coverage is, let’s talk about how you can run an event well, whether as a small e-sports association or a major event organizer.

Many of these teams will either convince streamers to host the show, or have players from their teams sit out the tournaments just to host. The former of these is a great idea, with proper consideration. Streamers spend their time going above and beyond to share knowledge and excitement about the game, so they are usually well suited to the task. However, many of them need a little direction to be their best on camera in a professional setting. Streamers are used to being the reason the audience is watching, and aren’t used to having professional constraints placed on them. This can cause some friction in the viewing experience as the hosts try to maintain audience attention with antics focused on themselves, rather than the event at large. With a small amount of direction and a discussion before the event, this behavior can be curbed and Streamers can bring their full charisma to bear in a prodcutive way. If you can’t get a Streamer as a dedicated host, then you should hire/train someone specifically for the job. This choice has its pros and cons, with the greatest pro being that you’ll always have someone on hand when you need them. The biggest con is that they’ll need to take time, sometimes even off the clock, to build up a following if they want to have the same Star Power that a Streamer would have.

The alternative choice is to have one of your players host the event. DO NOT DO THIS. Players make for excellent analysts, and can bring an amazing energy to the show, but they make for terrible hosts. They spend their time grinding games, learning the meta, and preparing to win tournaments. They do not spend their time striving to improve the viewer experience. If you want to make a player shine on camera, a dedicated host is critical. A dedicated host, someone who’s career is centered around being good on camera and keeping a show moving, can work together with a Player Analyst to provide a truly amazing experience.

The dream is to have a Dedicated Host who can drive the show forward and keep things exciting, while the Analyst chimes in with relevant information about match-ups and strategies. A proper Host/Analyst team will be able to keep the show rolling with exciting narratives and easy to understand explanations. If you try to run with two Analysts, then the show can bog down as they trip over each others’ sentences and argue over player choices. Meanwhile, two Dedicated Hosts can distract from the show as they begin to resonate off of one another, speeding past covering the players and leaving them trying to fill dead air with seemingly random conversation.

You should also have a second Dedicated Host: Not on the main stage, but as your roaming interviewer. A roaming interviewer is important for covering gaps between broadcasted rounds, as they can fill in air time when something goes wrong, and they can increase viewership by enhancing the narrative that the Main Host and Analyst provide. Its easy to look at this as an unnecessary role, or as something secondary to the Main Host and Analyst, but they are just as important to the overall health of the Coverage as the Main Host and Analyst. Its important that this role be filed by a Dedicated Host and not an Analyst. An Analyst can quickly fall into a coaching mindset, trying to teach the player what they did wrong or right, and that can put off viewers who are fans of those players.

Your hosts are going to be the face of the show, but they can only be as good as their supporting staff. And the one leading your supporting staff is the Producer. Your Producer needs to have a firm grasp of all information about the event as the information becomes available, and they need to know who to send where to correct any issues/fulfill any needs that crop up during the event. They need to be able to delegate, they need to be able to problem solve, they need to be able to communicate. They need to be the hive mind that drives the coverage of the event forward as smoothly as possible. This is one of the more stressful roles, as it can feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. It’s important to make sure they have everything they need to keep calm and make orderly decisions, so having an assistant can be critical. The Producer has enough to deal with behind the scenes, so the only people who should even know who the Producer of an event was are the people who deliberately look that information up. If your Producer is on screen/on mic, then you’re doing it wrong.

The next Supporting Staff we need to talk about is The Director. The Director is the Eyes of the event, putting audience attention where it needs to be, keeping the Hosts on task if they start to go off on a tangent, and making sure the audience has the maximum amount of information they need to understand and enjoy what’s happening in the event. This sounds the easiest to do on paper, but can be a nightmare in practice. The Director is the role with the most direct interaction with every worker for the show, and need to be able to quickly communicate what they need to everyone involved.

The Technical Staff are the last of the staff we’re going to list here, but that doesn’t make them any less important. The Video Team, the Broadcast Team, and the Audio Team are the bare minimum groups you’ll need to run a proper show. These small teams are going to be as unknown (if not more so) as The Producer, but anything that goes wrong with these teams is going to be the most visible to the audience. As such, a few tech demos before the show to ensure that every aspect of their job is working smoothly is vital. This may seem incredibly obvious, but its something that can be lost and forgotten in the hustle and bustle of event preparation, especially for smaller or newer productions. Tech demos help smooth out issues that can arise before they cause problems, and they are important for helping Directors know when they need to cut to something else, and what they have to cut to.

So to sum it up, here are the roles you need to fill to have successful event coverage:

• Dedicated Host
• Analyst
• Roaming Host
• Producer
• Director
• Audio Team
• Video Team
• Broadcast Team

These are your bare minimum roles you need to fill. Now, some of these roles can overlap if need be (I’ve personally had to do Audio, Video, and Broadcast simultaneously), but you should be trying to have at least one person completely dedicated to each role. A dedicated individual for each role will be much smoother than having one person trying to do multiple tasks at once, as well as significantly reducing the stress for everyone involved.

This article is just to cover the exact bare minimum needed to run a smooth show. Naturally, we could get into the specifics for each role and ways to improve your show through visual and audio design, but I can’t speak to the specifics on most of the roles. Instead, I’ll talk a bit about the roles I’ve done in the past, which include Dedicated Host, Audio, Video, and Broadcast roles in future articles. The next article in this series will talk about the Dedicated Host role; ways to improve your own skills as a host, things that are important for hosts to know, and a few ideas on how to train and prepare new hosts for the job!