Casting a Match

This is the core move: attaching yourself to a specific match as a caster so that everyone looking at that match knows you are covering it. A match can have several casters at once — an open community caster, someone a player personally invited, and the arena's official channel can all cover the same match. Here is exactly how it works, the three ways you get attached, and how the casters board keeps everyone coordinated.

Three ways a caster joins a match

1. Open community claim. You spot a match on the bracket and claim it yourself. Anyone signed in who is not a player can do this. This is the self-serve path and the most common one.
2. A player invites you. One of the two players (or a team member) can invite a specific caster to their scheduled match. You get an invite on that match card and choose to accept or decline. This is how players line up commentary for a match they care about.
3. The arena's official caster. A tournament admin can attach the arena's official channel (typically its Twitch) to a match. This is the "house cast" and is marked official on the card.

None of these is exclusive. A match can carry all three at the same time; every attached caster shows up on the card and on the casters board.

Claiming a match (community)

Open any tournament page and find a match you want to cast. As long as you are signed in with your Steam account, you are not one of the two players in that match, and the match has not been resolved yet, you will see a small 🎥 Cast this match control on the match card.

Expand it and you get one optional field: your stream URL. Paste the link where you will be broadcasting the commentary (your Twitch channel, for example), then hit Become caster. That is it. You have attached yourself to the match.

The moment you claim it, the match card changes for everyone, including signed-out visitors who are just browsing the bracket. The card now lists you (and any other casters) under 🎥 Cast by:

• Your persona, with your Steam avatar next to it, so the whole community knows who is covering this one.
• A Watch the stream ↗ link, if you pasted a URL. This is an outbound link straight to your channel. Braket does not embed or rehost your stream; it points viewers at you.

The two players in the match see this too. They will know who is casting their match before they even ready up, which is equal parts deterrence and hype.

Pasting or changing your stream URL

The stream URL is optional when you first claim, and you can set or change it later by claiming again. Re-submitting the cast form with a new URL updates the pointer. A few things Braket enforces so the link stays safe and clean:

• It must be an https:// URL. Plain http or other schemes are rejected.
• It is length-capped (up to 300 characters), so it has to be a real link, not a payload.
• It renders as a plain, safe outbound anchor. No embedded player, no script, no surprises for viewers who click it.

If you claimed without a URL because you had not started your stream yet, just come back and claim again once you are live to drop the link in.

Accepting a player's invite

If one of the players invites you to cast their match, that match's card shows a 🎥 You've been invited to cast this match panel. You get an optional stream-URL field and two buttons:

• Accept & cast attaches you exactly like an open claim — with the same card display, stream link, and replay access — except everyone can see you were invited by a player.
• decline removes the invite and leaves no trace.

Until you accept, the invite is pending: you are not yet shown as an active caster and the match is not held for you in any exclusive way. Accept when you are ready to commit to covering it.

The arena's official cast

Tournament admins can attach the arena's official caster to a match — usually the arena's own Twitch channel. It appears on the card like any other caster but tagged official, so viewers can tell the house broadcast from community casts. As a community caster you do not need to do anything about this; you can still co-cast the same match. It simply means the arena is covering it too.

Casting from the recording

You do not sit inside the players' game session. On Braket, watching a match means replaying its recording: the game uploads a replay of every organized match, and that recording is what you cast from.

• After the match, the finished match card grows a ▶️ Watch replay button — a steam:// link that launches the game straight into playback of that exact match. (You can also open the replay from inside the game's own replay browser.) Load it up, hit play, and commentate over your broadcast.
• While the match is still running, tournaments on games that support it stream the recording as near-live segments, so you can start playback trailing the live match by only the tournament's delay. Your "live" cast is a live commentary over a feed that runs a beat behind the action.

Because any number of people can play back the same recording, several casters can cover one match at once — which is exactly why the casters board matters (below).

Hidden information is handled by the platform, not by etiquette alone. A tournament sets a hand policy: hands stay hidden entirely, or the full recording (both hands) unlocks only after a set delay, or — for trusted, neutral-hosted broadcasts — immediately. Since the full-scope replay only becomes available once the delay has passed, a player watching your stream of their own match learns nothing they should not: the delay is enforced at the source. Where the game supports it, a trusted neutral caster can instead host the match session themselves and stream their own live view — that is the one setup where a genuinely live, full-information cast is sound.

The casters board: coordinate, do not collide

Because a match can have more than one caster, coordination matters more than exclusivity. Every tournament page has a 🎥 Casters board that lists who is covering what: each caster mapped to the round or match they are on, with a 🔴 LIVE badge next to any whose channel is currently live. Before you claim anything, glance at the board to see which matches already have coverage and where the gaps are. Casting the marquee match alongside another commentator can be great; leaving a whole quarter of the bracket uncovered is the thing to avoid. The board shows the whole community who has got what.

The one thing that is still gated: you cannot attach the same caster twice, and a player's invite to someone already attached is refused. Otherwise, pile on where it makes sense.

Stepping down

If you attached to a match and then cannot cover it, do the community a favor and free it up. On a match you are casting, your card shows an uncast control. Clicking it drops your cast and clears your stream URL. Tournament admins can also remove any caster from a match if needed. Claim early, but if plans change, release the slot so the board stays honest.

Free casts and paid tiers

Casting is free to start: 5 casts a month, with everything about casting working. Cover more with Caster Pro (15/mo) or Caster Ultimate (50/mo), or buy a pay-per-cast ($1.29) whenever you go over. Your allowance is counted across every arena on the network, and casts the arena attaches you to as its official caster do not count against it. The full breakdown — prices, what counts as a cast, and how to manage your plan — is in Plans and pricing.

The one hard rule: you cannot cast a match you are in

You cannot cast a match that you are playing in. Braket blocks it, and it blocks it thoroughly: not just the two head-to-head competitors, but any roster member of either side in a team match. If you are on either team, you are a player in that match, not its caster. That applies to all three paths — you cannot claim it, be invited to it, or be attached to it as the arena cast. Everywhere else you are fair game, but never your own game.

Casting also requires the tournament to allow spectators. Almost every tournament does (it is on by default), but an admin can turn spectating off for a given tournament. When it is off, the casting controls simply do not appear and claims are refused. If you do not see a "Cast this match" prompt anywhere in a tournament, that tournament has opted out.