How International Schools Stream $2,500 Tournaments Live

The Challenge: $2,500 Tournaments Parents Can't Attend

When Alex became technology director at International School Seoul in South Korea, he faced a problem common to international school athletics: tournaments cost families thousands of dollars, yet parents couldn't watch their kids compete.

"I would ballpark maybe $2,500 to send your kid for four or five days across the world to play in this conference. And that's us trying to keep the cost down by having the kids sleep at the school."

— Alex, Technology Director

The trips weren't just athletics. Students visited cultural sites, attended sumo matches in Japan, rode horses on the Mongolian steppe. But at $2,500 per student, parents wanted one thing: to see their kids compete.

A parent captures their child's international school basketball game, knowing family back home is waiting to watch

The existing conference structure made things worse. International School Seoul competed in a league with giant Korean schools (five times their athlete pool) and tiny micro-schools that couldn't host their own events.

"We would have these tournaments and some schools would participate would be way too small to ever put on their own events," Alex recalls. "And then some of the bigger schools were way too competitive for us to actually ever be able to compete with."

In 2021, Alex and three other similarly-sized international schools — in Seoul, Tokyo, Osaka, and Ulaanbaatar — broke away to form their own conference. From the start, all four schools agreed: there would be quality live-streaming.

"There was an agreement amongst all the four schools that there would be a quality live-streaming component to this so that parents could follow along, so that coaches who could not attend could see how their kids performed, and that the teams themselves could watch it and get a valuable artifact out of participating in the event."

Alex was put in charge of live-streaming for tournaments hosted at Seoul. That's when the search for scoreboard software began.

Finding the Right Solution: A Day-Long Decision

Alex's procurement process moved quickly — by design.

"If I had to put a time on it, maybe a day," he says. "You got to keep in mind I spend a lot of money and I evaluate a lot of tools. So these decisions have to be made."

Rather than broad internet searches, Alex tapped his trusted tech director network — a private Google Chat group of technology directors at international schools in Korea.

"When you have a strong network of colleagues who are all thinking about similar issues and testing similar things, this is usually best to go to them directly and say, 'What are you using?' And that allows you to filter through the options pretty quickly."

The group runs on a strict no-sales-people policy. Through it, Alex narrowed his evaluation to two or three options. KeepTheScore stood out.

"I think the thing that struck me about it was just how simple it was. So user-friendly to use and to set up."

But simplicity alone wasn't enough. Alex needed a specific feature: two-level access control for managing student operators.

"The thing I really liked about it was the idea that there's an admin side of it to change names and fonts and colors and logos and parameters. And then there's the scorekeeper link where you could just give it to the referee or the score club, the kids who are on the side, and that they can take ownership and actually keep the score and run the game — but they're not also able to wipe history or change team names or things like that."

This wasn't about control — it was about student empowerment:

"I think it's a huge component in EdTech software is the idea of empowering kids and saying, 'You are actually running the score here.'"

His search query to the network: "I'm looking for something simple and clean and easy to use." The criteria weren't for his own benefit: "Definitely for the other users, for the students and for the purposes of longevity." He needed a streaming-ready scoreboard that students could operate independently.

Grandparents thousands of miles away can watch their grandchild's basketball tournament live

Longevity matters in international schools:

"In most international contexts, the average teacher stays for about four years at a school, so it's a significant turnover rate. And so you need to have tools in place that can be easily transferred from one staff member to the next."

Alex had seen it before: talented people build impressive custom systems, then leave. The entire structure disappears. When the decision went to his director, price helped close it:

"It's very cheap by ed tech standards. So that also just means we're happy to just roll it over year to year and it's not as complicated as a decision as other tools."

The first year, Alex purchased an annual subscription. Year two, they switched to pay-as-you-go. Now it's on the permanent subscription list.

The Implementation: Students Running the Show

Alex's setup for tournament streaming:

• Platform: OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) streaming to YouTube
• Cameras: Positioned on the fourth floor to capture the entire soccer field
• Scoreboard: KeepTheScore embedded as a browser source overlay, covering basketball, soccer, volleyball, and other school sports
• Account structure: Shared account not tied to any individual staff member
• Documentation: A spreadsheet with hex codes, logos, admin links, and scorekeeper links for each sport

"I remember we made a nice spreadsheet of all the hex codes for the official colors and logos so that the kids could find them really quickly and update them really well. And then on the same spreadsheet that had all the logos and colors, we also added the admin link and the scorekeeping link all in one place."

Students gather in the cafeteria to support their classmates competing across Asia

Alex ran 4–5 lunchtime training sessions before each tournament, covering live stream setup, camera troubleshooting, and scoreboard operation. Two groups trained separately: one focused on admin setup (team names, logos, board configuration), the other on scorekeeper duties (running scores during games).

Student independence is critical for weekend tournaments, when Alex monitors remotely via Google Chat and by watching the YouTube stream: "I will often catch problems before they do." But the goal is minimal intervention.

The Results: Conference-Wide Adoption and Zero Churn

When asked if the other schools in the conference use KeepTheScore, Alex pauses:

"It's a small conference, so it's only four other schools, and I believe I've only ever seen KeepTheScore being used."

All four schools — Seoul, Tokyo, Osaka, and Ulaanbaatar — appear to have standardized on the same system. Not by mandate. By quality.

After two years of use, there's no intention to switch:

"I know there's zero thoughts right now about changing software next year. I think everyone involved in the live-streaming and sporting aspect really appreciates, like I said, the simplicity, the use of it, the fact that students can... It's built in such a way that students can really take it over and just own it."

For a small school, student ownership isn't a luxury. It's a necessity:

"It's a huge relief on a small school."

The conference also discovered an unexpected use case: embedding live scoreboards on their conference website. Teachers who are teaching six classes in a tournament day can't watch a live stream — but they can quickly check the embedded board between lessons.

"If you're teaching six classes in that day, you're not watching the live stream... but you want to just be able to go and really quickly check in and see where the team is at when they are playing."

Why It Works for International Schools

International schools face constraints that make simple, transferable tools essential.

High turnover — four-year average tenure — means software selection is essentially succession planning. Complex custom solutions die when their creators leave. Tournament economics create pressure too: when streams fail, parents who paid $2,500 to watch remotely are not quiet about it.

And OBS is already complex enough. Adding a complicated scoreboard on top would break the whole system:

"There is so much complexity in live-streaming already. Just having the scoreboard be clean and simple and work well and easily and anyone can figure it out is hugely appreciated."

When Alex transferred to International School Vienna in 2025, KeepTheScore came up in his first conversations about athletics:

"Would I be interested in using your guys' product again at the current school? Absolutely, for sure."

The pattern these four schools established — organic cross-conference standardization, student-run weekend operations, tools that survive staff turnover — is a practical blueprint for international school athletics programs worldwide.

Running international school athletics or tournaments? Get started with KeepTheScore and see why schools across Asia trust it for student-run live-streamed competitions.