Live Sports Commentary with Open Intercom

Guide · Updated April 2026 · 10 min read

Covering a live sport from a remote venue means your commentary box needs a reliable path into the cloud and back again — for programme audio going out, and for talkback and IFB coming in. This guide walks through how to connect a Prodys commentary box at the venue to Open Intercom in the cloud using srt-whip-gateway and whep-srt-gateway, and how to route audio for both a commentator at the venue and a remote expert joining from a studio.

What you need

The setup at a glance

The diagram below shows how audio travels between the venue, cloud, and studio. The Prodys box sends commentary outbound over SRT; the srt-whip-gateway injects it into Open Intercom as a WHIP source. On the return path, whep-srt-gateway subscribes to the relevant Open Intercom call and delivers a mixed return feed back to the venue mixer over SRT.

How the audio flows

Commentary feed (venue to cloud)

The Prodys box sends a continuous SRT stream (caller mode) to the srt-whip-gateway instance running in the cloud. The gateway converts the SRT audio to a WebRTC WHIP push, injecting the commentary into an Open Intercom Audio feed call. Other participants who subscribe to that call — including the remote expert — hear the live commentary.

Remote expert (studio to cloud)

The remote expert opens a browser tab, navigates to the Open Intercom site URL, and joins the relevant Production. No software installation is required. They join the commentary call as a normal participant and can talk directly to the venue commentator.

Talkback and IFB (cloud to venue)

The whep-srt-gateway subscribes to a dedicated return call in Open Intercom via WHEP. It re-encodes the received audio as an SRT stream and sends it to the venue A/V mixer. The commentator hears this return feed through the Prodys IFB connector or a monitor speaker — giving them programme audio plus any studio talkback that the director chooses to route.

Mix-minus and IFB in practice

A classic intercom problem is acoustic feedback: if the commentator hears their own voice in the IFB, they double-talk. Open Intercom handles this with its per-participant listen configuration — the commentator's return call is configured to carry everything except the Commentary feed call, giving a clean mix-minus feed directly in the browser interface without any external matrix required.

For the remote expert, the setup is symmetric: they hear programme audio from the venue commentary call and any other participants, but can be excluded from hearing themselves if they are also contributing into a return call.

Routing with calls

Open Intercom organises audio routing inside a Production using Calls. For a sports commentary setup you typically need:

When joining an audio-feed call you will be shown a role selector dialog. Choose Listener to monitor the feed without contributing, or Audio Feed to act as a source (for example the srt-whip-gateway injecting the Prodys stream).

Setting it up

1. Deploy Open Intercom. Sign in at intercom.apps.osaas.io and create a new intercom site. Give it a short, memorable name (e.g. sportsmatch).
2. Create a Production. Inside your site, create a Production for the event (e.g. "Final — 2026-05-10"). This scopes all calls to a single event.
3. Add calls. Create the calls listed in the routing table above. For the Commentary and Return-IFB calls, set the call type to Audio feed. For Talkback, use a standard talk/listen call pair.
4. Deploy srt-whip-gateway. Provision an instance on Open Source Cloud. Configure the SRT listen port to match the Prodys caller address, and set the WHIP push destination to your Open Intercom Commentary call endpoint. Set the gateway's role to Audio Feed so it acts as the source for the Commentary call.
5. Deploy whep-srt-gateway. Provision an instance for each return path you need. Set the WHEP subscribe URL to the Return-IFB call in your Open Intercom Production, and set the SRT destination to the IP and port of the venue mixer.
6. Configure the Prodys box. Point the outbound SRT stream (caller mode) at the public IP and port of your srt-whip-gateway instance. Point the inbound SRT return listener at the port your whep-srt-gateway is sending to.
7. Invite the remote expert. Share the Open Intercom site URL with them. They open it in a browser, select the Production and the Commentary call, and choose Listener. To allow them to talk back, have them also join the Return-IFB call.
8. Test before going live. Do a full circuit check: speak into the Prodys box and confirm the remote expert hears you; have the expert speak and confirm audio arrives at the mixer. Verify no echo on either end.

A note on orchestration

Once both gateways are running you can monitor their status — and restart them if a network hiccup drops the connection — from the Manage I/O Bridges page inside Open Intercom. The page shows all active SRT-to-WHIP transmitters and WHEP-to-SRT receivers with live status indicators, so your technical director can see at a glance whether each path is healthy.

Things to watch during the event

• SRT stream health. Watch the packet-loss and RTT counters on the gateway instances. SRT is resilient to loss, but sustained loss above ~5% will affect audio quality.
• Browser audio permissions. The remote expert must allow microphone access in their browser. Advise them to do this before the event starts, not during a crucial moment.
• Firewall / NAT. SRT in listener mode requires an open inbound UDP port on the gateway. Confirm the port is reachable from the venue network before the event.
• Latency budget. SRT adds 80–250 ms of buffering on top of Open Intercom's WebRTC path. Build this into your IFB expectations — the total round-trip from venue to expert and back is typically 400–700 ms, comparable to a satellite-delay IFB setup.
• Token availability. Open Intercom uses OSC tokens for running gateway instances. Monitor your token balance in the OSC console to avoid unexpected suspension mid-event.