12 Hours, One Livestream: Behind the Scenes of Our Charity Cycling Broadcast

When Marko Baloh, one of Slovenia's best-known ultra-endurance athletes, took to a stationary bike at BTC City for a full day of charity cycling, our job was simple to describe and hard to execute: stay live for twelve straight hours without a single dropped frame.

The event, organized in partnership with Botrstvo v športu, the Anita Ogulin Foundation, ZPM and the Slovenian Olympic Committee, raised funds for children in need while Marko pedaled from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Viewers could donate by SMS throughout the day, and our livestream was the thread that connected everyone watching from home to what was happening on the studio floor.

A twelve-hour broadcast is a different beast from a two-hour conference stream. Crew rotations have to be planned so nobody is operating a camera on empty, backup encoders need to be ready to take over instantly if anything hiccups, and the whole system has to hold up through changing light, changing energy in the room, and hours of continuous audio mixing. It is exactly the kind of long-format, high-stakes production our team is built for.

Projects like this are a reminder of why we do live production in the first place: when the cameras keep rolling, people keep showing up. If you are planning a long-format broadcast, a telethon, or an endurance event of your own, we would love to talk about how to keep it live from start to finish.