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Live Event Streaming
The British Open
Taking Control of the Live Stream, the Audience and the Data
Client Overview
The British Open Brass Band Championships is one of the oldest and most prestigious brass band contests in the world, first held in 1853. Each year leading bands compete for the title, followed by players, supporters and brass enthusiasts around the world.
For many of those followers, the live stream is the contest. Broadcasting every performance, and offering it again on replay, is central to how The British Open reaches an audience far larger than the concert hall can hold.
The Challenge
The British Open came to Continuum Learn because its previous streaming provider, World of Brass, was not meeting its needs as a contest organiser.
Key challenges included:
Without viewing data the organisers could not measure the reach of their own broadcast, and with a third party holding the platform and taking a large cut of every ticket, the stream was doing far less for the event than it could.
The Solution
For its next contest, The British Open ran the broadcast on its own branded Continuum Learn platform: the live stream, ticket sales, replays and viewer reporting all under its control. Continuum's production partner, Red Shell Productions, filmed the contest.
Every Continuum team chooses a focus: an LMS focus for course-led training, or a streaming focus that puts live events and replays at the front of the platform. The British Open runs with the streaming focus, so viewers arrive at a branded watch experience rather than a course catalogue.
Live Streaming Built In
The contest was broadcast through Continuum's native live streaming:
- Low-latency streaming from OBS or any RTMPS encoder
- A branded watch page with the contest programme
- The whole broadcast recorded automatically as a replay
- Replay availability set by the organisers, now 365 days
The same streaming engine powers live lessons for training providers, so streaming-led organisations get a proven platform rather than a bolt-on.
Tickets Sold Directly to the Audience
The British Open sells access to its own viewers:
- Live and replay passes sold from the event's own platform
- Payments taken through the event's own connected Stripe account
- No streaming middleman taking a share of each ticket
- Every buyer becomes a customer the event can reach again
The British Open now holds the customer relationship, not a third-party broadcaster.
Filmed by Red Shell Productions
Continuum's production partner Red Shell Productions filmed and produced the contest:
- Filming and sound at the venue throughout the contest day
- Live production of the broadcast, sent straight to the British Open's Continuum channel
- The whole 9.5-hour broadcast delivered as one programme for live and replay viewers
The organisers had one team for filming and one platform for the stream, tickets and statistics, with no broadcaster in between.
Full Viewer Statistics
For the first time, the organisers can see how the stream performs:
- Viewer-hours and average watch time
- Unique viewers and how long they stayed
- Peak concurrent viewers and live versus replay viewing
- Purchases per event, with CSV export
That data gives the organisers evidence of the contest's reach for sponsors, partners and planning future events.
An LMS or Streaming Focus, on One Platform
Continuum Learn is a learning platform with live streaming built in. Each team picks the focus that suits it in its settings.
The focus sets how the platform looks to the people using it:
- LMS focus: courses, learning paths, certificates and CPD at the front, with live lessons inside courses
- Streaming focus: live events, replays and a branded watch library at the front, with streaming-styled sign-in pages
- Both use the same events, ticketing, payments and reporting
- An organisation can add courses later without changing platform
For The British Open, the streaming focus means the platform presents itself as the contest's own broadcast channel, while the reporting and commerce behind it are the same tools training organisations use every day.
The Results
The first British Open on the new platform exceeded the organisers' expectations.
The stream reached an international audience the venue could never hold, and The British Open now owns the platform, the audience data and the customer relationship it needs to keep building that reach.
The Outcome
Continuum Learn gave The British Open a streaming platform it controls, replacing a provider that kept the audience data and a large share of the revenue.
By combining:
- Professional filming by Red Shell Productions
- Native live streaming with automatic replays
- Ticketing through the event's own Stripe account
- Detailed viewer and watch-time reporting
- A streaming-focused, fully branded platform
The British Open's first major live event on Continuum Learn showed the model working at scale, with replay viewing still adding value months after the contest.
Key Takeaway
Event organisers don't have to hand over their audience, their data and a large cut of their revenue to get a professional live stream.
With Continuum Learn, organisations choose an LMS or streaming focus and get live streaming, ticketing and reporting on a platform they control.
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