Guide30 October 2026

Five Mistakes in a Live Streaming Brief

Written for anyone specifying this for the first time. These are the gaps that make quotes incomparable and results disappointing.

Not saying how many people will watch

Audience size drives platform choice, bandwidth, and whether you need a content delivery network. Fifty viewers and fifty thousand are different products.

If you do not know, say so and give a range. A supplier can work with "we think two hundred but it could be a thousand". They cannot work with silence.

Confusing the stream with the recording

These are separate deliverables. A brief that says "we need it live streamed" and then assumes a polished edit will arrive afterwards has not asked for the edit.

Specify both: what happens live, and what you want in your hands the following week.

Not deciding who owns questions

Remote Q&A needs someone to moderate, someone to decide what gets asked, and a route for it to reach the chair. If the brief does not say who does this, it will be nobody, and the remote audience will type into a void.

Decide whether questions are anonymous, who filters, and how they reach the room.

Assuming the venue's internet is fine

The most common assumption in event briefing. Venues say they have good internet because they have WiFi that works for email.

Either establish that a dedicated tested line exists, or specify that the supplier brings connectivity. Do not leave it unstated, because a supplier who has assumed the venue provides it will be cheaper on paper and stuck on the day.

Leaving accessibility until the end

Captions and BSL are production elements, not post-production ones. Interpreters book up. Human captioners book up. A brief that adds them three weeks out has both cost and availability problems.

If there is any chance you need them, put them in the brief from the start. Removing a line from a quote is easy.

What a good brief contains

Date, venue, get-in time, audience size, whether access is controlled, how many rooms, what production level you expect, what you want afterwards, accessibility requirements, and who the decision maker is.

Ten lines. It gets you comparable quotes and a supplier who is not guessing.