Live video streaming is an incredible opportunity for small organizations. The AGA and NAGF often stream live content featuring tournament gameplay from their biggest events. However, many viewers have noticed that the livestream content for these tournaments usually does not follow basic practices, often resulting in dead air, lost time to technical issues, repetitive non-content, and off-putting visuals. The volunteers who put up these streams are doing this entirely for free, and we love them. But it's also clear that this is an something that could be drastically improved with a few hours of volunteer work per event. It's the face the organization is putting out to the whole world. This is important!

Goals of a Livestream

The number one goal of any livestream for an small organization is to promote the organization's brand. Some level of production value shows that the organization behind the livestream is run well, is trustworthy, and is worthy of the viewer's time. A regular, high quality livestream for the AGA might mean an extra dozen registrants for the U.S. Go Congress, for instance. People love to grow their connection to video co

The second main goal is retained viewership. A livestream should provide enough value to the viewer, by way of entertainment or education, for instance, that some of the viewers return for the next stream and promote the stream to interested friends.

Finally, streaming is capable of generating direct revenue through donations and ad revenue. Direct revenue naturally correlates with viewership and brand appeal, so we can consider it to be subordinate to the above two goals.

Current State of Affairs

Today, I tuned into a livestream on the official AGA channel that featured, by my guess, six tournament boards with top Canadian players, including at least one NAGF professional. I have added a screenshot of the stream as the petition banner. Please take a look and tell me what you see before reading on.

First of all, the entire portion of the stream that I watched was simply rotating between boards. There was no live commentary that I could see before I tuned out, and I waited more than 15 minutes. A viewer posted a question about commentary in chat and as far as I could tell, didn't get any response. Two hours later, I checked in, and then the stream had abruptly ended.

The stream background is a beautiful, eye-drawing graphic in a very bright red color. It's so bright that it competes strongly for focus with the main board. The board itself is a direct share of the default OGS skin, cropped in a way that makes it feel cramped. The player names are direct screenshares of OGS's default scoreboxes. The scoreboxes are incorrectly cropped in the corners, so random nubs of the wrong color are visible. There are zero shadows or highlighting anywhere on the screen, making it appear flat and dead.

There was no live video or pictures of the contestants. No information was provided aside from the name and rank in the OGS scorebox. The games rotated relatively quickly, so there wasn't much time to analyze any position if the viewer became interested. No future events, online platforms, or AGA partners were advertised, despite congress being a month away and the pro qualification event being a week away.

This may seem like nitpicking volunteers. Again, I love that we are trying to bring these tournaments out to the masses, and I love that volunteers work hard and I am grateful that they do it all for free. However, 100% of the assets on the screen I was looking at were off in some way. Compare the video to absolutely anything you have watched this year. Consider asking a 16-year-old budding Go player to watch such a stream. Would they be able to stick with it?

This stuff is big! It matters a lot! And we can do it well without overspending!

Why is this an urgent issue?

Twitch in the U.S. has over 35 million users, and 72% of Twitch users are under 34. 
YouTube has the largest share of total TV usage across all streaming platforms with 12.6%, well ahead of Netflix (8.3%), Disney+ (4.5%), Prime Video (3.9%), Roku (2.8%), and Tubi (2.1%).
In July 2022, streaming moved... to first [place among all live media] and reached an all-time high of 47.3% share of the viewing audience in the middle of 2025.
YouTube Live is very popular among those aged 18–34 (42% [of viewership])...

Online video is the largest media category in the world. Cable TV is not close. It's also self-promotion that can pay for itself. It hits our best market for new members, young viewers, extremely hard. The records live for years on the main AGA channel.

If our streams don't retain viewers, we will never be recommended to new audiences. In fact, we will be hidden by the algorithm, sometimes even to our own subscribers. The algorithm uses Click-Through Rate, Average Live Watch Time, Engagement, and Early Drop-Off as metrics. Watch time and Early Drop-Off, a metric that records when people quickly leave the stream, are key signals for the algorithm. When I watch for a minute and leave because it's not clear when the presenter will arrive, it negatively affects the entire channel.

In short, we want active viewers and chatters that stick around for at least 10 minutes.

What are you suggesting?

1. The AGA should sponsor a media budget to provide a standardized set of digital assets (graphics, OBS layouts, thumbnails), refreshed annually or semi-annually, to be provided to organizers at every event that will be streamed on the AGA channel. (Such graphics can certainly make clear space for local tournaments can use their own branding). The budget can be as small as an additional $100 per year, which is the price of one large coffee in Seattle, and we can rely on skilled volunteers if we really need to do it for free.
2. The AGA should develop a compact training program to promote a minimum quality bar to stream on the official AGA channel. This includes use of the provided graphics or another set of approved graphics, guidance for preventing problems, guidance on how to fill dead air and breaks, and mitigation of technical issues. A 10-minute tutorial video would suffice. If you are streaming on the AGA channel, you are an ambassador for US Go. Thus, you should have some slides and training provided so that you are ready to show our love for the game.
3. The AGA should try to enforce a minimum quality bar at every event by coordinating with the organizers. The minimum quality bar should include:
   1. Ensuring the event has sufficient local volunteers and resources to run the stream.
   2. Live quality control. At least one volunteer outside of the live-commentary team viewing the stream as it starts and as commentary resumes, and as commentary ends or pauses. This person is responsible to communicate technical issues right away. (The current mechanism is to hope that chatters provide a notification. This is just not reliable. It has lead to many instances of talking with the microphone or camera turned off on AGA streams, many instances of an empty chair centered on the livestream, some instances of audible background conversations and livestreaming of setup/teardown, etc.)
   3. Scheduled live commentary by an experienced community member or members when possible. Amateurs are loved and encouraged, dead air is not.
   4. A published event timeline, shown on stream or in the stream description.
   5. Promotion of AGA branding/logo. Promotion of future tournaments, livestreams, and Go stuff.
4. If we can't get a commitment to quality, we should recommend the organizers stream on their own channel and still provide as much support as we can. Again, this is not to push people away, but rather just to spread an acknowledgement that the AGA brand is important and ensure that half of the commentator's face isn't cropped off the side of the screen on the main channel. Most people will be happy to commit to doing the basics if we ask for some level of accountability and explain our reasoning, but if we don't, they simply won't.
5. The AGA should set goals, track, and publish information re: livestream impressions.
6. The AGA should actively seek stream-viewer ideas and feedback at events.

Future Goals

I believe that AGA should make a long-term goal to become worthy of product sponsorship. Consider that Nongshim Ramen already sponsors Go tournaments and already sells ramen in America. If we ask, "what does Nongshim want to see from the AGA before sponsoring?", that sort of question can serve as a north star to guide our content program. When donations come calling, what do we want them to see?

The financial numbers on corporate event sponsorship to a motivated group are often $10,000 or more. They depend heavily on the metrics for viewer impressions. Even one small brand sponsorship could change the game for the E-Journal team. We can also promote other Go content creators for free or for a small fee, or trade banners with other content creators.