You may have noticed pages on Lichess that track over-the-board chess tournaments, these pages are called “broadcasts,” and any Lichess user can make them. These pages show live games as they unfold with new moves arriving in real time. They are built to connect to the live-updating PGN file produced by DGT boards but can work with other sources as well. 

In order to better structure the content, broadcasts are organized in “tournaments” and “rounds.” If you’d like to make your own, head to https://lichess.org/broadcast/new to get started.

You will first be met with the following form. The information you will enter here will be used for all the rounds of the event.

Let's go through the fields you need to fill out one at a time.

1. Tournament name: This is the name of the tournament you will be broadcasting. Do not include a round number here, you will be asked to do it at a later stage.
2. Short tournament description: No more than 2 or 3 sentences describing the event. This will only be visible if the broadcast page is made “official,” more on how that happens later. This will also be used for the “broadcast” tab once the event is made, if you don’t fill the field below.
3. Full tournament description: This is what will end up in the “broadcast” tab once the event is made. You can put a paragraph describing the event’s rules, a list of the participants, the schedule and standings, and anything else you want. These pages can use markdown text, which is very useful to produce the tables that are generally used to show standings. At the end of your description, the event’s schedule will be added automatically based on the round names and the “Start date in your own timezone” values provided (see below). Please do not try to add the schedule table manually, it will appear as a duplicate.
4. Automatic leaderboard: If enabled, Lichess will use the game results from the broadcast to generate standings. It needs all the games of the event to be broadcasted or otherwise uploaded. Team standings, knockout brackets and custom tiebreaks are currently not supported.

Once you finish filling out this form and submit it you will be then sent to the following form. Here you create the rounds, where the games will actually appear.

Let's go through the fields you need to fill out one at a time.

1. Round name: This is where you enter the round name, like “Round 1” or “Quarterfinals Day 1”. This field is always auto-filled but you can change it to anything you need.
2. Source URL, or game IDs: The URL of a publicly hosted file of the moves and players and other tournament data. Lichess accepts 3 formats for this data. PGN, livechesscloud.com links, and Lichess Game IDs (up to 64 IDs at the same time are supported). This URL will be checked every few seconds and the broadcast will be updated accordingly. If you use a livechesscloud.com link the system will “guess” the livechesscloud.com round number for you. If you don’t broadcast all rounds for some reason, please see “troubleshooting” section.
3. Start date in your own timezone. The time and date that the event starts. Note that the Broadcast will start attempting to access the source URL 30 mins before this time. This field is optional, you can also start the broadcast manually. If you know it, it’s advisable to fill this field as it will be used to auto-generate the event’s schedule table.

Once you finish filling out this form and submit it you will be then sent to the broadcast. It will include only one round, to add the rest you can go here and repeat the steps until you are done:

Here is an example of a broadcast:

To the left you will find the broadcasts, games, and members tabs.

The broadcast tab is selected by default. When this tab is selected you will see what you had previously written under “Full Event Description”, and a list of all the rounds appear in the tabs area. You will also see all games in the broadcast arrayed in a multi-board format.

When the games tab is selected you will see the middle section of the broadcast change to show a single game, the one selected in the games list. By default  the first (in the games list) ongoing game if any, otherwise game 1, is selected

When the members tab is selected you will see the lichess users who are members of the broadcast. The broadcast creator can add new members or click the settings wheel next to their name to promote them to “contributors,” If a user is a “member” and streaming with a Lichess streaming page they will receive a green stream notification on the broadcast that all users can see. If a user is a “contributor” they will be able to change all of the broadcast settings, add or remove games from the games list and manually add or remove moves from individual games. Attention: When you create a new round, the members and contributors of the previous round are automatically added; you can manually remove them if you wish so for any reason.

In the lower right of the broadcast page you will see a “broadcast manager.”

In order to make the broadcast begin updating you will need to hit “connect.” If you set the broadcast to begin at a certain time it will start automatically. if you would like to return to edit the form you filled out to create the broadcast, that can be done by clicking on the gear icon here.

Once the broadcast is running, it will check the source URL entered for new moves or new games every few seconds. If everything is running well it will be green.

If there is a problem, you will see a red error message.

Troubleshooting the PGN.

There are many things that can go wrong with the source PGN:

1. The PGN that Lichess receives must be a valid PGN. Any brackets that are not closed, (a “[ without a subsequent “]” or vice versa) illegal moves, etc will cause it to not work properly. One way to test the validity of a PGN is to try to import the game with Lichess’ “import game” function.(https://lichess.org/paste) An error will appear if the PGN is not valid.  If you have a PGN with multiple games you can enter them one at a time to see which is the problem. 
2. The order of the games in a multi-game PGN cannot change. If game #2 suddenly becomes game #3 and vice versa the broadcast page will not function properly. You will see an error that indicates this in the broadcast manager: “game #2 is the same as game #3.” If new games appear at the end of the source PGN, the broadcast page will continue to function correctly. The new game will simply be added at the end of the games list. If a new game appears in the middle of the PGN the broadcast page will no longer function correctly.
3. If all games in the source PGN disappear and are replaced by new games, the broadcast page can continue to function. The old games will be left at the top of the game list and the new ones will appear below it. This may happen if you change the source URL.
4. The broadcast page will request a new PGN every few seconds from the source. Some websites don’t allow this many requests so quickly and may block or limit the requests.
5. Games of the wrong round might be relayed (assuming you have provided the right source, it applies only for livechesscloud.com sources). As mentioned before, if you used a livechesscloud.com link as source, the system will “guess” the round number for you. In some cases, notably if you don’t broadcast all rounds, this “guess” might be wrong. In that case, go to broadcast settings and change the number manually. After you submit it, you will need to reset the round as described below.

Resetting the round: 

In the broadcast settings, (the gear on the broadcast manager) there is a button at the bottom to reset the broadcast. It will delete all games from the games list and try to place new ones from the source URL. This is often a good first step when trouble-shooting a broadcast page. 

How to distribute a link of your even to other broadcasters

At the bottom of every Broadcast is a "share" tab. Within that tab is a link to the PGN file for:

1. The game you are currently viewing. ("Download Game")

2. The round you are currently viewing ("Download all games")

3. All games in the event you are currently viewing. ("Download all Rounds")

Those links will can be distributed to other website to allow them to broadcast your event.

Adding Delay

Lichess now has a delay feature that can be used to delay the arrival of moves. The delay will affect the arrival of the moves to the lichess broadcast AND the pgn links. The delay option can be found in the submenu for each round.

How to make a broadcast “Official.”

Some broadcasts are designated as “official.” These broadcasts will appear on the list at lichess.org/broadcast. It is at Lichess’ discretion which events are big enough to appear on this list. You can write to the Lichess Broadcast team and ask for your event to be made official.

Can broadcast pages follow games played online?

Yes! And in fact many broadcasts are made from games played on Lichess and other sites. For Lichess games, you can enter up to 64 game IDs as the source, separated by a space.