Connect a Genius Sports ScoreLink to your scorebug

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At most high school football games, someone at the scorer's table is already running the official scoreboard. They start and stop the clock, add points, update the down and distance and keep the stadium board correct.

A few rows away, the person running the stream is often entering the same information again for the scorebug.

That works, but it also means the stream operator has another job to do while trying to follow the game. A touchdown can be on the stadium scoreboard immediately and still take a few seconds to make it onto the stream.

ScoreLayer can now read the score directly from the stadium scoreboard.

If your venue uses a Genius Sports ScoreLink, your American football scorebug can follow the scoreboard console automatically, including score, game clock, quarter, down and distance, timeouts and possession.

The stream operator can spend less time updating the scorebug and more time running the broadcast.

Built on the day of a customer's game

This integration started with an email from a US high school using ScoreLayer for its football streams.

They wanted to know if ScoreLayer could pick up their scoreboard automatically. They had considered OCR, but they also had a Genius Sports ScoreLink connected to the stadium scoreboard.

That made the Genius Sports feed the obvious place to start. It already had the data directly from the scoring system.

There was one detail that made the request slightly more interesting: their first game with ScoreLayer was that evening, at 7 PM Eastern.

We got access to their Sportzcast feed, worked through the documentation and started recording real scoreboard data from their field. That gave us something much better than sample data to build against.

A few hours later, the integration was running in production.

Before kickoff, we could watch the clock on their stadium feed and the ScoreLayer scorebug counting down side by side.

Being a small team means we can move quickly when there is a real matchday problem to solve. If something is missing for your next game, send us a message. We want to hear about it.

What a ScoreLink is

A ScoreLink is a small device from Genius Sports that connects to a stadium or gym scoreboard controller.

It reads the data from the scoreboard and sends it to Genius Sports' Sportzcast service, where it becomes available as a live feed.

ScoreLinks are installed at thousands of venues and support more than 200 scoreboard makes and models. Your school or club may already have one without the streaming team ever needing to think about it.

Look around the scoreboard console for a box marked "Genius Sports" or "ScoreLink", or ask whoever manages the stadium scoreboard.

To connect your ScoreLink to ScoreLayer, you'll need these details from your Sportzcast account:

• the email address you use for Sportzcast
• your Sportzcast access token
• your ScoreLink's bot number, which identifies the scoreboard in Sportzcast

If you don't have those details, Genius Sports can help you find them.

Setting it up

You'll find the Sportzcast feed in the control panel for any American football scoreboard on a paid ScoreLayer plan.

Open Sportzcast Scoreboard Feed in the control panel and click Connect Sportzcast. Enter your Sportzcast email, access token and bot number, then choose which ScoreLayer team matches the home team on the venue scoreboard.

Save the connection and click Start listening.

The connection status is shown in the same card.

If you see "Connected, waiting for scoreboard data", ScoreLayer has connected successfully but the scoreboard hasn't sent anything yet. That's completely normal if the scoreboard console is switched off.

Once ScoreLayer starts receiving data, the card turns green and shows "Live". Your scorebug will then follow the stadium scoreboard.

Your Sportzcast access token is stored encrypted and isn't visible to anyone without access to the scoreboard.

What follows the stadium scoreboard

While the Sportzcast feed is running, ScoreLayer can receive:

- Score for both teams - Game clock - Quarter - Down and distance - Ball on, including the yard line - Timeouts remaining for each team - Possession, when the scoreboard console provides it

The console normally reports the game clock about once per second while it's running.

ScoreLayer uses those updates to start and stop the scorebug clock at the right time, while letting the clock run locally between updates. If it moves more than about a second and a half away from the stadium clock, ScoreLayer corrects it.

During our testing against the customer's live feed, the ScoreLayer clock stayed within a second of the stadium scoreboard without jumping or stuttering.

Your team names, colors, logos and scorebug design still come from ScoreLayer. Only the live game data comes from the stadium feed.

A few things to know on game night

Keep the control panel open. ScoreLayer listens to Sportzcast from the browser tab where you clicked Start listening. Keep that tab open during the game. Your overlay in OBS or vMix continues running separately, just as it normally does.

The stadium scoreboard is the source of truth. If you change the score or clock manually while Sportzcast is connected, the next update from the scoreboard will replace it. If the stadium operator enters something incorrectly, the stream will show the same value until it is corrected. You can always click Stop listening and take over manually.

Halftime still needs a tap. Stadium scoreboard systems usually keep showing the 2nd quarter during halftime. ScoreLayer follows the quarter reported by the console, so you can tap HT manually and leave it there until the scoreboard moves into the 3rd quarter.

Ball on only gives us the yard line. The console can tell us that the ball is on the 35, but it doesn't always tell us which team's 35-yard line it is. ScoreLayer keeps the field side you last selected in the control panel.

If access is refused, check the bot number. Sportzcast accounts can only read ScoreLinks they're licensed to access, so an incorrect bot number is usually the first thing to check.

American football first

We started with American football because that's what this customer needed, and because we had access to a real ScoreLink on a real field to test against.

For now, the Sportzcast connection is only available on American football scoreboards in ScoreLayer.

ScoreLink itself supports many more sports. Sportzcast provides feeds for basketball, baseball and softball, soccer, hockey, volleyball, wrestling and others, and ScoreLayer already supports several of those sports.

We'd like to expand the integration, especially when we can test against a real scoreboard before releasing it.

If you want Sportzcast support for another sport, email support@scorelayer.live and tell us which sport you're streaming and when your next game is.

If we can get access to the feed, we can take a look at what your scoreboard sends and see what it would take to support it.

## Getting started

Sportzcast support is included with ScoreLayer's monthly and annual plans.

If you're already using ScoreLayer for American football, you'll find it in your scoreboard control panel.

If Sportzcast isn't the right setup for your venue, you can also control ScoreLayer through the [Stream Deck plugin](/blog/stream-deck-scoreboard-control) or the [Peripheral Push API](/docs/api).

You can see the available scorebug designs on the [American football page](/sports/american-football).

[Set up your American football scoreboard →](/sports/american-football)