Twitch and Going Live

Claiming a match tells the community you are covering it. Linking your Twitch channel tells the community when you are actually broadcasting, and turns your cast into a one-click "watch now" for anyone browsing the bracket. This is the feature that converts a static caster credit into live viewers. Here is how it works and, just as importantly, what it does not do.

Linking your Twitch channel

Go to your personal page (My matches) and find the 📺 Twitch card. If you have not linked yet, it explains the feature and gives you a link button.

When you click to link on a live Braket deployment, you are sent through Twitch's standard OAuth sign-in. You approve the connection on Twitch's own page, and you come back to Braket linked. A few properties are worth understanding, because they are what make this safe to do:

• Read-only, identity only. Braket asks Twitch for no scopes at all. The connection verifies who you are (your channel login) and nothing else. Braket cannot post as you, cannot touch your stream, cannot read your chat, cannot change anything on your channel. It learns your channel name, full stop.
• One callback for the whole network. Every arena on Braket, no matter what game or what custom domain, shares a single registered redirect back to braket.gg/twitch/callback. When you start the link from your arena, Braket remembers which arena and which player you are, sends you to Twitch, and on the way back attaches your verified channel to the right account on the right arena. You never configure anything per-arena, and there is no cross-arena cookie flying around. It just works from wherever you started.

Once linked, the Twitch card shows your channel as twitch.tv/yourlogin with a link to it, and an option to unlink whenever you want. Unlinking is instant and removes your channel from Braket.

If you are exploring a local or demo build of Braket that runs without Twitch keys, linking is even simpler: you just type your channel name and it is attached directly, with the same downstream behavior. Either way, the end result is the same: Braket knows your channel and can detect when you are live.

How Braket knows you are live

Once your channel is linked, Braket periodically checks Twitch to see whether you are currently streaming. It does this through Twitch's official Helix streams endpoint, using an app-level token, and it checks in batches so it stays well within Twitch's limits. Results are cached for about a minute per arena, so page loads stay fast and Twitch does not get hammered. You do not have to press anything or tell Braket you have gone live: start streaming on Twitch, and within roughly a minute Braket picks it up.

There are two flavors of live detection, and both matter for casters:

• Caster live state. When you are the caster on a match and your linked channel is live, Braket stamps a 🔴 LIVE badge on that match card and next to your name on the tournament's casters board.
• Player POV live state. The two players in a match can also link Twitch and advertise their own point-of-view streams on the match. Those show up on the card as their own links, marked 🔴 when live and 📺 when offline. This is separate from casting: players stream their own POV, you stream the cast. A single match can carry both, giving viewers a choice of angles.

The LIVE badge sends traffic to you

Here is the part that should make you want to link right now. When your cast is live, the 🔴 LIVE badge and the "Watch the stream" link on the match card both point directly to twitch.tv/yourchannel. Braket does not embed your stream in its own page. It does not re-stream, mirror, or rehost a single frame of your broadcast. It links out to you.

That design choice is deliberate and it is in your favor. Every viewer who spots your LIVE badge while browsing the bracket and clicks through lands on your Twitch channel, where they can follow you, subscribe to you, and count toward your numbers. Braket's job is to surface that you are live and where to watch; your channel keeps all the value. The platform is a discovery funnel that empties into your channel, not a walled garden that captures your audience.

So the recipe is simple: link your Twitch channel once, claim the matches you want to cast, and go live on Twitch when the match starts. Braket handles the rest, lighting up the badge and routing curious viewers straight to your broadcast.