Chess coverage

Chess tournaments, where the broadcast is the board

Chess breaks every rule of sports production. There is nothing to film - the match is a board and two clocks. What a chess stream needs is the position, the move list, the time, and the pairings for the round, presented so a viewer can follow a game they are not sitting at.

Sportsmedia7 · Visakhapatnam · working across Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Delhi

Board view

Position on screen

Clocks

Both players, live

Pairings

Swiss and round robin

Delay

For fair-play protection

The chess scoreboard, built for chess

A generic score bug with the words changed does not work. These are the fields our graphics carry for chess, driven live from the scorer.

Board

The live position, large enough to read on a phone

Move list

Moves as played, so a late viewer can catch up

Clocks

Both players' remaining time, with increment

Player cards

Names, ratings, titles, club or state

Round

Round number, board number and the result when it comes

Standings

Cross-table or standings after each round

Camera plan

Positions are chosen for the sport and then adjusted for your venue. This is the starting point.

Top-down board

Directly over the board for the position, which is the main picture of the broadcast.

Player two-shot

Both players for the human side of it - the pause before a move, the handshake.

Hall wide

The scale of a full hall and the arbiter's walk, used between rounds.

Tournament formats we cover

Swiss tournaments over several rounds, round robins, rapid and blitz events run in a single day, and age-group and rating-category sections running together in one hall. The commentary and graphics carry more of the broadcast than the camera does.

Broadcast delay is not optional

A live chess broadcast with no delay is an invitation to cheat - anyone in the hall with a phone can read the stream. Serious chess streams run on a delay, and the length is the arbiter's decision, not ours. We set whatever the tournament requires.

Everything else a chess tournament needs

The production is one part of it. These are the other services, and they share the same player list.

Online player registration

Entries with photos, documents and fees collected before the tournament starts.

Scoring graphics

The score bug and cards above, driven from the live score feed.

LED wall graphics

A separate feed for the screen at the venue.

AI commentary

Audio on the matches where no commentator is on site.

Club or academy page

A permanent public page for the organizer, with every tournament on it.

Questions we get asked

Before you enquire

Do you need electronic boards?

They make a live position feed straightforward. Without them, the board comes from the overhead camera and the move list is entered by an operator, which works for a show board or two.

Can we take entries with rating and category?

Yes. Rating, FIDE ID, age category and the usual documents are collected at entry, with separate sections taking their own entries and fees.

Can you publish round-by-round pairings?

Yes, on the tournament's public page as well as on screen between rounds.

Keep reading

Live streaming Scoring graphics Player registration All services

Send us your fixture list

Tell us the sport, the dates and the ground. We will come back with what the coverage needs and what it costs - and if registrations open before that is settled, start collecting entries today.