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The Pensacola Beach Airshow is one of the largest free airshows in the country, drawing crowds to the coast for a weekend of flying that closes with the Blue Angels, this year marking their 80th anniversary. We worked with Hellcat Productions to livestream the event, so anyone who couldn’t make it to the beach could still watch the full show live.
The setup
The show streamed live and simultaneously to Realms.tv, Facebook, and YouTube. Realms.tv was the primary broadcast home; Facebook and YouTube ran as simulcasts. We were live across two days: Friday, July 17 and Saturday, July 18 from 10:30 AM to 3:00 PM each day.
How we supported the production
A clean two-day live broadcast comes down to the work done before you go live. Our role was to get Hellcat set up right and stay on hand through the event.
Dress rehearsals. In the days leading up to the show, we ran full end-to-end rehearsals with the Hellcat crew: pushing a live signal to all three platforms at once, checking encoder settings, confirming stream keys, and watching how the feed held up under real conditions. Running the full path ahead of time meant the first minute of the actual broadcast wasn’t the first time anything had been tested.
Equipment best practices and recommendations. We worked with the crew on the gear and settings that matter most for a multi-platform simulcast: encoder bitrate and resolution targets that stay stable across YouTube, Facebook, and Realms.tv; audio levels and redundancy; and a connectivity plan built for a crowded beachfront where bandwidth is never guaranteed. The goal was a setup that holds up over hours of live airtime, not just a clean thirty-second test.
On-call event assistance. We were available throughout both broadcast days. With the crew running cameras from ground level up to a lift over the beach, having someone on call to watch the streams, catch issues early, and troubleshoot in real time kept the focus where it belonged: on the show.
Total reach
121K total views across all platforms.
- YouTube: 57.2K total views (largest single audience)
- Facebook: 56.5K total views
- Realms.tv: 7K live viewers (primary broadcast home)
YouTube
- 57.2K total views
- 47.1K unique viewers
- 3.5K peak concurrent viewers
- 2.6K average viewers
- 18:24 average view duration
- 1,481 live chat messages
- 2,976 reactions
- 183.6K thumbnail impressions
- 7.6% impression click-through
- 56.5K total views
- 31.4K viewers
- 5,004 total engagement
- 3.8K link clicks
- 480 reactions
- 192 comments
- 190 shares
80% of Facebook viewers were not yet following the page, most of the audience was new.
Beyond the broadcast (7 days around the event)
- 567K views (up 1,207%)
- 18.1K engagement (up 746%)
- 15.5K profile visits (up 2,509%)
- +1,417 new follows
YouTube
- 70.6K channel views
- 12.3K watch-time hours
- +765 new subscribers
- 90% were new viewers
What viewers said
“It was like being at the football stadium, but having the game playing on your phone! I enjoyed listening to these men while I watched the show from my balcony.” — Susan Faith Bruns, Facebook
“Watching with my Mom — she’s in the Netherlands, I’m in Pensacola. It’s great being able to be close while far away.” — @ADHDidi, YouTube
“This is awesome! My grandfather retired from the Air Force — Master Sergeant, served in the Korean War & WWII. Thank you for posting. Watching from Western North Carolina.” — @yuvonneoglesby9495, YouTube
Takeaway
The two-day broadcast reached 121K viewers across three platforms and drove +1,417 new Facebook follows and +765 new YouTube subscribers in the following week. Most of the audience was new, reaching people well beyond the crowd on the beach.
