Hello again and welcome back to The Baseline. Today I want to tell you about streaming, and what we do at Rebound on our video platforms. Although we don’t use them regularly, our Twitch and YouTube accounts are the hosts of our semi-regular competitions and live events, and it is that which I want to tell you about today.
From the Rebound team, we control the whole show from an OBS stream we host on our streaming computer.
Who Takes Part?
The streaming computer sits in one of our side-offices, and it is the fastest one we have. If you follow our social media, we occasionally make clip content of our favourite streamers and their videos, and it is on the streaming computer that we do that.
The biggest event we work on with the streaming computer is King of Ze Court. KOZC (as we abbreviate it) is our semi-regular streaming competition, where we take well-known names on Twitch and place them against each other as well as real-life tennis players, all in an effort to achieve victory in the Tennis Manager tournament!
These events are a lot of fun because of just how enthusiastic our players get. We’re always on the lookout for players who have real passion for the sport and for friendly competition – anyone who has seen Poneeeyclub’s performances last year will know what I mean!
We host the events from our streaming computer at the Rebound office, and with us we invite colour commentators to provide some insight during the event. This has ranged from famous internet commentators like Cam Williams to real-life professionals such as Antoine Benneteau. Our participants have spoken multiple languages and come from various countries, making the events multi-national and very fun to organise.
When we’ve got our events organised, we then go ahead and ready the stream. We at the marketing team need to organise the graphic design, the stream layout, and make sure that absolutely everything is set up technically before the stream begins! It’s a busy week, believe me.
And in the end, this is how it looked for our Grand Finale at the end of 2021. We had four participants live from three different countries, alongside Antoine representing Tennis Manager, and YouTuber Arthur Ray on comms!
Setting Up
It’s a lot of work to get these events organised, but it’s a lot of fun. First, we contact our favourite Twitch partners from prior events, and then we look around for some new faces – people with a connection to our games in some way. This can be their love of sports management or that they follow tennis in their daily lives. Once we’ve got them onboard, we book a time that suits everyone and then we make all the preparations. Between us, we can just about work out the technical parts without too many boomer moments, and then the event is go!
Our last King of Ze Court was our biggest one yet: 20 participants in total! Most of the time our streamers do it for free because they love either the game or the concept. Occasionally for a big name we’ll give some money, but with an Indie budget we’re not rich. However, with a sponsor we always have a prize of some kind awaiting the winner!
However, technical troubles are almost inevitable. On the French stream we had two crashes, but with a world premiere alongside two casters and four participants, I still call that a job well done!
With the mix of old and new, there are always interesting personalities meeting at the events. Sometimes players pull out last-minute, and others arrive last-minute. Some are experts at Tennis Manager and others are coming to it brand-new. Often they get comfortable in their roles as managers, and other times they get a little too into it (I’m looking at you, Ravie-Davie!).
At the end of 2021 we had three separate streams for qualifying (UK, France, and Germany), and a Grand Finale stream that was won by Art_Cow. He received a luxury watch from the event’s sponsor Frédérique Constant, as well as a custom trophy hand-picked by us (pictured below!). The events are always a lot of fun, and we plan to host another one around the time of the French Open.
The defending King of Ze Court champion, Art_Cow.
Over to You
Who has been your favourite player in the King of Ze Court tournaments? We’ve had so many different personalities and styles come to the event, that we’d love to know who you liked the most, and who we should invite back! Likewise, if there is a player you think would be perfect for us, let us know 😊 Our team are contactable by Discord or on any of our social media pages. Get in touch and tell us what you’d love to see at the next King of Ze Court!
Until next week --- Jeremy
p.s. to close out, here's how the French broadcast of our KOZC Grand Finale went in December 2021.