Understanding The Four Levels Of Professional Livestreaming

I recently wrote a post on HDVideo-Pro’s blog in which I divided livestreaming into four tiers. For me, this exercise is an effective way to examine not only what livestreaming is but also who the clients are for this service and what kind of gear, skills and creativity you need to succeed at that level. It can also help answer which tier you’re currently at now or aspire to in the near future.

Tier 1—Small Business, Institutional Users: This sector is already using livestreaming to conduct meetings, round tables and discussions. There are teachers as well now utilizing livestream teaching for their students online. This market is already saturated and well served by all of the free or low-cost livestreaming commodity services like Skype, Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. I’d also lump social media content creators into this category.

By and large, this is a DIY sector since few people on this level have the budget or are spending much money to livestream. They mostly sit at their computers and talk to others in groups online. Production values are low to nonexistent, although there are exceptions to the rule, of course. Many people at this level also use low-grade, built-in webcams on their laptops, iPhones or low-cost external webcams.

There’s very little business opportunity here for a production company or freelancer.

This type of client may want to hire someone to livestream their event, such as a wedding, funeral, graduation, a band’s performance, school presentation or event or low-end corporate live event. This level of production can be accomplished with a small one- or two-person crew using some simple camcorders or even PTZ remote cameras running