Community Broadcast Guide

Community Broadcasts are a powerful way to share your chess events with the global community on Chess.com. Whether you're hosting a local tournament or an international invitational for individual players or teams, Community Broadcasts let you display live games, standings, schedules, and even livestreams on Chess.com/events.

This article will guide you through the process of adding your own event broadcast to Chess.com. Here are the steps you'll need to take:

• Getting Started
• Setting Up Your Event
• Managing Your Event
• Adding The Event's Schedule
• Embedding Live Streams
• Setting Up Live Game Relays
• Editing Games
• Final Steps
• Troubleshooting And Support

Getting Started

To begin, visit Chess.com/events and click the "Get Started" button in the right sidebar. This will take you to the setup page, where you'll fill in basic details about your event.

Setting Up Your Event

When you click the "Get Started" button, you'll see a form to create your event. Here, you'll have to fill out the basic information about the event. You can find explanations about each field of this form below.

• Event Name: The event's official title (max. 70 characters). Keep it clear and concise; this will generate the event's URL. You should include the year of the event in the title to distinguish it from previous or future editions. The title should accurately reflect the event, and you should avoid generic or incomprehensible titles. We may remove events that do not follow these guidelines or events with names that are not distinctive enough and may be mistaken for others. Titles must be in English and use standard capitalization (capitalize important words, but don’t use ALL CAPS or all lowercase).

• Local Time Zone: Choose the event's time zone. All times will be displayed in this zone.

• Start Date & Time: The moment your event appears as "in progress." This should be no later than the first game's start time, but you may choose an earlier time.

• End Date & Time: When your event ends. Set a time well after the final round to ensure full coverage.

• Admin Usernames: You're the default admin, but you can add other trusted users as co-admins.

Privacy Settings

• Restricted Event: Toggle ON to limit access to selected Chess.com usernames. Useful for delayed public broadcasts or livestream monitoring.

Sections

• Section Names: If your event includes multiple divisions (e.g., Open, Women, or U18), list them here—one per line.

• Event Format: Choose Swiss or Round-Robin for individuals or teams. For formats such as brackets or matches, please email events@chess.com.

• Time Control: Use BASE TIME (in seconds)+INCREMENT format. For example, 900+10 represents 15 minutes with a 10-second increment.

Note: For Time controls with multiple periods or unequal time (e.g., armageddon), only include the time control of the first period.

Once you have completed filling out the fields above, click "Save" to proceed.

Managing Your Event

On this next screen, you can reorder sections ("Move Up" and "Move Down" buttons), add ("Add Section" button) or delete sections ("Delete" button), and adjust settings for each individual section ("Edit" button).

Here's where you can add information about your event using the Description field. This information is what people will see when they click on your event on Chess.com. 

You can also upload the logo of your event using the "Upload" button next to "Image." Please note that images should have a 16:9 resolution and a maximum file size of 5 MB. Images that do not follow these guidelines may display poorly.

When editing one of your event's sections, you'll find the Player Name Replacement option. This lets you adjust how player names are displayed. Normally, Chess.com matches a player's name to their FIDE ID, which enables us to display the player's photo, flag, ratings, and other information. 

However, if a player's FIDE ID is not set in the game relay source, we may display incorrect information about the player (or no information at all). Filling out the Player Name Replacement field corrects this issue. You can add the names and FIDE IDs of players who are being displayed incorrectly following this format: [Player's name]: FIDE ID (for example, Magnus Carlsen: 
1503014). Add one entry per line and click Save.

If a player competing in your event lacks a FIDE ID but shares the same name as someone with a FIDE ID, our system will attempt to match that player with the incorrect FIDE ID. In this case, you need to instruct our system not to match the name with the ID. You can do this by using an asterisk (*) instead of a FIDE ID—[Player's name]: * (for example: Magnus Carlsen: *) 

You can read more about the recommended practices for live games relays in our Broadcast Guide.

When setting up a team event, you'll also notice the Player Team Assignment field. You can use this field to assign each player to a team, which enables us to display team results properly. Add one entry per player in the following format: [Player's name]: [Team's name] or [Player's FIDE ID]: [Team's name] (for example: Magnus Carlsen: Alpine SG Pipers or 1503014: Alpine SG Pipers).

Our system can automatically generate an info card with key details about your event. This card appears at the top of the Info tab and gives users a quick overview. We recommend enabling it for consistency—and it's required if you haven't entered details in the section above.

To enable it, toggle "Show Info Card" on, then fill in the city and country, time control (use the same format as when setting up the event, or a description such as "90 minutes + 30-second increment"), and the event's official website.

The card appears as follows:

Finally, you can add the event's schedule, live stream, and game relays. We'll go over the steps to doing each below:

Adding The Event's Schedule

Adding a schedule helps members see when each round of the event starts in their or the event's local time zone. It also enables the feature that displays a countdown to the start of the next round. 

You can add your event's schedule by clicking the "Add Schedule Entry" button. 

• Round Name: This is the name people will see when they go to the Schedule tab of your event (you can check out the 2024 Speed Chess Championship schedule as an example)
• Date: The date when the round occurs
• Start time: The start time of the specific round in the time zone you selected as the event's time zone

You should fill out each of the fields above and click the "Save" button for each round. Once you save a round, you can click the "Edit" button to edit its date or start time, or the "Delete" button to delete it.

Once you've added all the rounds of the event, you can click the "Back" button to return to the previous page, where you can manage your event.

This guide provides helpful tips on setting up events properly. It also provides a template you can follow.

Embedding Live Streams

If there's live coverage of the event, you can embed a live stream so it appears on the event's page. You can do this by scrolling down to the "Sections" part of the page and clicking the "Edit" button of a section. You'll then see a "Stream" section with an "Add Stream" button. Click that button to open the "Add Event Stream" page.

To embed live streams, follow the steps below:

1. Set Start and End Times for when the embed should appear on the event's page (this does not affect the stream itself)

2. Add a Title (you can customize it or match your platform's title)

3. Choose your platform (Twitch, YouTube, or Kick)

4. Enter the Channel/Video ID

5. Set the Language to optimize visibility for users

6. Click "Save"

Note that you can embed multiple simultaneous streams (e.g., multilingual commentary) or edit and update existing streams as the event progresses. Please also note that you should add streams to each of the event's sections.

Setting Up Live Game Relays

Members want to see how the games from an event are progressing. You can do this by setting up live game relays, which allow us to broadcast those games live, move by move.

To set up live game feeds, scroll down to the "Sections" part of the page and click the "Edit" button of the section you want to add game relays to. Scroll down again to the "Move Relays" section and click the "Add Relay" button to open the Add Move Relay page. 

Here's a brief explanation of what each field means:

• Time Class: Classical, Rapid, or Blitz. This determines which FIDE ratings will be shown
• Delay (in seconds): A common value is 900 (15 minutes) for fair-play compliance. Please note that if you decide to adjust the delay while games are in progress, the live games will "freeze" for the duration of the newly set delay, regardless of whether the new delay is shorter or longer. Live games relay will then resume automatically with the new delay value.
• Source Type: The source of your move relays. This can be:
  • DGT Cloud: Link from DGT LiveChess
  • PGN Link: Auto-updating PGN file URL
  • PGN Directory: a range of similar, incremental PGN URLs (see below) 
  • Chess.com/play: Chess.com playzone event tag

  • Manual PGN: Paste text from a PGN file manually

If PGN links change per round, toggle "Includes All Rounds" to off and specify which round each link corresponds to.

Alternatively, if the URLs of the PGN files are incremental (eg, “.../round-1/games.pgn”, “.../round-2/games.pgn”, etc.), you can use the "PGN Directory" option. To do so, you should specify the range with this format: https://yourserver.com/event/round-[1:9]/games.pgn. Note that you can only specify one range within the URL.

You may add multiple sources (e.g., DGT boards + ID-chess) as needed.

When broadcasting an online event that takes place on Chess.com/play, you can choose that option and, in the "Source URL" box, input the event tag from Chess.com/play. Everything else will be configured automatically. In this case, we will display players' Chess.com ratings.

If you're using the Manual PGN option, follow the steps below:

1. Open PGN in a text editor

2. Copy and paste valid PGN text into the provided field

3. Click "Save" to upload the games

Once you're done adding a relay, you should click "Save" and go back to the Manage Event page.

We have published an extensive Broadcast Guide. We strongly recommend you follow its recommended practices.

Editing Games

Event admins have access to the backend of live games, where they can edit the games of current and previous rounds. To do so, click on the "Edit Games" button under "Broadcast Controls:"

You'll see the event's full list of games (for previous, current, and future rounds).

If you encounter issues with any games, we recommend resetting them. You can do so by selecting the games you want to fix and deleting them using the red "Delete Selected Games" button at the top of the page. Our system will delete and reload them with the correct information. The trashcan icon next to each round deletes the entire round.

Final Steps

Once you’ve configured everything, click "Save" on the Manage Event page to create your event page. Once it's created, admins will be able to see two buttons at the top of the page to manage the event and edit its games. 

You should click the "Manage Event" button to make edits to your event and the "Edit Games" button to remove accidental or incorrect entries from the Games tab.

Find your event URL and keep it handy. All your broadcasts are listed under My Events in the sidebar.

To request that your event be publicly listed on Chess.com/events/current, fill in the official public listing request form below, and we will take care of it as soon as we can.

Please note that we will only list your event publicly if it matches our setup guidelines. Here's what we're looking for:

• A clear, high-quality thumbnail or logo representing your event
• Key information filled out on the Home tab. Check out our suggested template.
• A properly completed Schedule section
• An embedded and scheduled stream, if applicable

Troubleshooting & Support

If you encounter issues or need help, you can reach us at events@chess.com. We'll be happy to help, and we can even assist you with unsupported formats or other technical blockers.

Thanks for sharing your event with the Chess.com community!