How to add a live scoreboard to your OBS stream 2023

Are you streaming a live sports event using OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) or a similar software? If you want to add live scores to your stream (sometimes called a score bug, then this is the right post for you.

OBS is a fantastic desktop software for streaming. It is free, available for all major platforms and easy to use. You can download it here. A quickstart document is also available here.

We have recently released a feature that makes it super simple to add a scoreboard overlay for OBS. It looks professional, is quick and is also totally free! You can even control the scores from a phone, all without installing any extra apps.

What makes it even better is that our solution also comes with a stand-alone online scoreboard that you can share on social media or project onto a big screen. You are basically getting multiple scoreboards at once. All of them are live and update in real-time.

How does it work?

There are 3 steps to getting it working. We will describe each step in detail below.

1. Create a scoreboard on Keepthescore.com and customize it to your needs.
2. Get hold of the overlay URL.
3. Insert the overlay URL into your streaming software. In this post we will just be looking at OBS (Open Broadcaster Software).

Step 1: Create a scoreboard

In this step we create and customize the live scoreboard overlay. To begin, click here to create your scoreboard and then click "Create new scoreboard". You can do this without registering an account.

You should then see the following. This is your "control panel".

Click on the team names to edit them. You can also configure a few other things.

You will use this control panel to change the scores, once you have integrated the overlay into your stream. You can also share the URL of the control panel to give someone else the ability to change scores.

The score panel also works great on a mobile device or tablet, all without having to install any extra apps.

Step 2: Get hold of the overlay URL

Next, we will get hold of the overlay URL. It will look something like this: https://keepthescore.com/stream/vzrxdnpiedr/. This is all you need to insert the overlay into your stream.

Click on the orange "SHOW AND SHARE YOUR SCOREBOARD" button at the top of the control panel. You will then see a screen like this:

Click the panel that the arrow is pointing to in the image above. Now you will see this:

Click on the blue "COPY URL" button. The URL should now be copied to your clipboard.

By the way, you can also choose the layout of the overlay on the above screen. Choose between a horizontal or vertical layout.

Onto the final step!

Step 3: Insert the overlay URL into OBS

The image below shows the main OBS window with a placeholder image instead of the live stream. We are going to add our scoreboard overlay to this placeholder image.

We are going add a new "source". Go to the source window at the bottom and click on the "+" button. Then click on "browser".

Accept the defaults in the modal dialog by clicking on "OK".

In the next screen you paste the URL you created in step 2 into the "URL" field. It also makes sense to adjust the width field to 1000. See below:

Click on OK, and your new browser source should be added and visible as below:

You can use the red frame to adjust the size of the overlay and position it as you require. You are now ready to start streaming! 🎉

Troubleshooting

If you have long team names, the overlay might not fit the screen or otherwise look strange. See image below.

Fix this by changing the size of the browser window in OBS. You can do this by clicking on the "gear" icon in the sources list and then adjusting the width field. See below:

Advantages of our solution

Just to remind you why the Keepthescore.com solution is so great, here's a quick summary:

• No software install is required to create or use the scoreboard overlay. All you need is a device that is capable of accessing the internet and has a browser.
• The person who is doing the score-keeping can be anywhere in the world.
• It's free for basic use, but some extra features are paid.
• A standalone scoreboard for sharing on social media or projecting onto a screen also comes included.
• We will be adding features and new sports according to what YOU request.

Please give us feedback!

Do you have a question, feedback, or a feature request?

Great! We answer every message within 1 working day (sometimes on the weekend too). You can reach us in the following ways:

• Write us an email
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