What I learned streaming to 25,000 people at MCM Comic Con
When the Natural Six Dungeons and Dragons session went live on the MCM Comic Con Main Stage, around 25,000 people were watching globally. Here is what that taught me about live streaming at scale.
The room and the stream are different shows
The audience in the ICC Auditorium sees the full stage: the energy, the laughter, the atmosphere. The audience at home sees a rectangle. If you treat the stream as a camera pointed at the stage, you give the online audience a lesser experience.
I directed the stream as its own programme. Shot choices, pacing, graphics and transitions were designed for the screen, not just captured from the room. That is the difference between a live stream and a broadcast.
Three cameras, one operator
The setup was three manually operated Panasonic remote cameras. I directed the crew, called the shots and vision mixed the live programme on vMix. On a tabletop RPG session, the coverage has to follow the conversation: who is speaking, who is reacting, when to go wide, when to go tight on a dice roll.
The instinct for shot calling comes from years of live work. You cannot script it. You read the room, anticipate the moment, and trust the crew to follow the call.
Redundancy is not optional
At around 25,000 viewers, a dropped stream is not a quiet failure. It is a public one. The encoder, the internet path and the streaming platform all need backup plans. I run a failover checklist before every show of this scale, and I monitor the stream on a separate device throughout.
On this session, the stream held for the full runtime. That is not luck. That is planning, testing and having a written failover plan next to the desk.
What carries over to every show
The lessons from streaming to around 25,000 people apply to shows of any size. Treat the stream as its own programme. Plan the coverage, do not just capture it. Test the failover before the audience arrives. And direct the show for the audience that cannot be in the room, because they deserve the same quality.
If you have a live show that needs a stream, I can help. Book a call and tell me what you are planning.