Live Video Events: How to Create an Interactive Experience

Live online video events are growing in popularity, with many companies choosing to stream major events live. It's not just for concerts or sporting events anymore.

Before a company streams a live event, it should understand the expenses and the difficulties, including attracting an audience. At the recent Streaming Forum conference in London, Will Neale, CEO for London-based live broadcaster ShowCaster, gave a presentation on delivering live events with viewer interaction. He started by pointing out all the complications that come with live streaming.

"The first question we always ask is, 'Why bother with live?' Live is really expensive compared to delivering on-demand," Neale said. "Live is really hard to do, particularly hard to do well. It's really risky; stuff always goes wrong with live -- eggs get thrown at you, or whatever it might be. And live generally gives you less polished output than pre-recorded output. There is no point in just doing live just for the sake of it. We always say this to our clients and people we're working with."

That understood, there's a reason live online video is growing in popularity. Some occasions are simply better experienced live, even without interactivity.

"There are certain events where you don't need interactivity, where people are always going to want to watch live: live sport for example," Neale said. "People always want to watch that as it's happening, before they know the results. Then there are other events -- Red Bull man throwing himself out of space, for example -- it's really interesting to watch that live because you don't know the outcome, you don't know what's going to happen. So, it's much more engaging to watch that live, even if there's no interaction."

For more on pulling off a live video event, including attracting and audience and getting them involved, watch the full video below.

Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net