Just curious. I'm guessing it's around 10-20 seconds, but I wonder if anyone has any knowledge or firsthand experience that would tell me otherwise. Would it be a general broadcasting policy to keep things delayed in case of any live mishaps?
External link →Lead producer of the LEC here. In general there is about 3-5 seconds between the live game and observer, so the audience in the studio sees the games virtually instantly.
The encoding process + stream output results in an additional 30-45 seconds. All-in-all, for live games on stage our delay to the average viewer is generally around or slightly below a minute.
In the LEC where teams may play remotely due to COVID, our observer delay for games is at minimum 3 minutes to ensure competitive integrity, but we usually do 10 minutes to build a buffer. We use those 7 minutes to skip over pauses on air whenever issues relating to the remote environment (like internet issues, etc) arise.
Thanks for the info! Sorry if I jump onto your comment but I wanted to ask something related: do the players on stage hear the casters and the crowd? If there's only a few seconds of delay, casters often comment on information what should not be given to the players, eg who has recalled, if a team is setting up a play, summoner spell cool downs etc. I heard that players have a constant stream of white noise in their headphones and they can only hear the game and each other, is that so? If yes, then it's a bit sad they don't hear the crowd cheering for them :)
Thanks for the work you all do!
Players on stage wear heavily insulated headsets which include some baseline white noise to mask the sound of the casters and audience.
Thanks for the details! I'd assume it's be a similar story for the other regions?
I can’t confidently speak on behalf of every region, particularly in how they handle remote games due to COVID (as each region has a unique situation— we take 10 minutes because Berlin, as a city, has some difficult internet infrastructure to contend with at times).
But it should be fairly similar.
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