Hosting a Watch Party for the Big Game: A Planning Checklist

I've hosted a lot of playoff nights in a lot of small apartments, and the lesson that took me longest to learn is that the game is the easy part. The game shows up on time. What goes wrong is everything around it: the stream that freezes in the second quarter, the wings that come out of the oven during the last two minutes, the guest who needs a ride home and doesn't mention it until midnight.

So this is a countdown, not a recipe. Work through it from the top and by tip-off your only job should be watching. It's written with a basketball final in mind, but it works for any big game.

One week before

• Settle the headcount. Ask people to reply with a number and to say if they're bringing kids. A watch party for eight and one for twenty are different events.
• Count your seats honestly: kitchen chairs, a bench, floor cushions for the people who like to sit low. If you're short, borrow folding chairs now, not on game day.
• Ask about allergies and dietary needs in the invitation itself. Finding out at the door is how a host ends up eating dry crackers.
• Send the tip-off time and a rough end time. A basketball broadcast usually runs a little over two hours, longer if the game is close. Anyone paying a babysitter will thank you.
• Recruit a co-host. One person who runs drinks or the oven while you run the room makes the night twice as easy.
• Decide which room is for watching and which is for talking. Not everyone is there for the game, and those guests need somewhere to be loud during free throws.

Two days before

Set up the screen

Move the furniture now, while the house is quiet. The centre of the screen should sit close to eye level for someone seated, not up above a fireplace where everyone leaves with a stiff neck. A common rule of thumb puts the main seats about one and a half to two and a half times the screen's diagonal away. Check glare at the hour the game will actually air: a window that's fine at 8 p.m. can wash out half the screen at 4 p.m.

Turn off motion smoothing in the picture settings (every manufacturer calls it something different) and skip the "vivid" mode, which makes the hardwood look radioactive. Pick one sound source, never two running slightly out of step. If there's a second screen in an overflow room, put it on captions.

Then sit in every seat, floor cushions included. If you can't read the score bug from a seat, move the seat or move the screen. Our guide to what makes a good room for a game goes deeper on sightlines, and most of it applies to a living room.

Test the stream and the delay

This is the step people skip, and it's the one that ruins nights. Log into your service on the device you'll actually use and play something live for twenty minutes. Make sure the account won't ask for a password on game night and the subscription hasn't lapsed.

Then find out how far behind you are. Compare the game clock on your stream with a live score app on your phone. Streams often run behind cable, sometimes by a few seconds and sometimes by a lot more. That gap is where spoilers live.

The group chat is the worst offender. Somebody across town on a faster feed will send a single word, and your whole living room will know how a play ended before they've seen it start. Ask guests to mute score alerts and sports apps, and tell your out-of-town group chat you'd like silence until the buzzer. Phones face down on the coffee table is not a bad house rule.

Shop

Buy everything that keeps: chips, cans, cheese, frozen wings, sauces, paper towels, bin bags, foil, parchment. Leave fresh herbs, bread and greens for game day. Buy more ice than seems reasonable.

How much food

Treat this table as a planning rule of thumb, not a law. Teenagers eat more than you'd believe, and a late tip-off after dinner means people eat less.

Game day morning

Food that holds

The best watch-party food stays good as it waits. That rules out anything fried to order, unless you want to spend the second quarter at the stove.

• Start the slow cooker. Chili, pulled pork and meatballs in sauce are the classics because time is on their side. A pork shoulder on low needs around 8 to 10 hours and pulls easily once the inside reaches about 195 to 205°F (90 to 96°C).
• Prep your sheet pans. Line half sheet pans (18 by 13 inches, about 46 by 33 cm) with foil or parchment and get everything cut and seasoned, so game-time cooking is just sliding pans into the oven. Megan Tremblay's comparison of fried, baked and smoked wings has the oven method with times and temperatures, and the nachos section of our game-day food guide covers layering so the bottom chips don't go soggy.
• Clear fridge space. Drinks can live in a cooler or a bathtub full of ice. The fridge is for food.

Drinks for everybody

A cooler of beer and a bottle of pop is not a drinks plan. Aim for three kinds of options: beer and whatever else your crowd likes, alcohol-free drinks people actually want, and water that's easy to find. Alcohol-free beer has improved a lot in the last few years, so stock a couple of styles rather than one sad six-pack. Add a pitcher of sparkling water with lime, mint and a little simple syrup, or iced tea with lemon. Set the station up away from the screen, and put the water and alcohol-free options at the front, not hidden behind the beer.

Kids and bins

• If kids are coming, make a corner for them: crayons, a sheet with "count the threes" or "guess the final score" on it, and a tablet with headphones for when the game stops being interesting to a seven-year-old, which will be around the second quarter.
• Put out two labelled bins, one for trash and one for recycling, plus a box for empties. Guests use bins they can see.

Two hours before

• Turn on the TV and the stream and leave them on through the pregame show. If something is going to break, you want it to break now.
• Arrange the seating. The best sightlines go to the people who care most about the game, not automatically to the host. If fans of both teams are coming, give each side a decent view. In my experience, seating rivals side by side works better than putting them on opposite sides of the room, where it turns into a standoff.
• For a mixed room, set two house rules and say them cheerfully as people arrive: cheer for your team rather than at the other side, and the trash talk ends at the final buzzer.
• Get the first round of food going. Hot dip and the first sheet pan should come out as people walk in, because guests who arrive hungry eat fast and drink faster.
• Know who's driving. Ask at the door, casually, or watch for car keys landing on the hall table. Those guests get first pick of the good alcohol-free drinks.

Keeping food safe while it waits

Health Canada and the USDA both advise keeping hot food at 140°F (60°C) or above and cold food at 40°F (4°C) or below, and not leaving perishable food at room temperature for more than two hours. In practice:

1. Hold hot food in the slow cooker on its warm setting. Don't reheat leftovers in a slow cooker, though: bring them to 165°F (74°C) on the stove or in the microwave first, then move them in to hold.
2. Serve dips in smaller bowls and refill from the fridge or oven, instead of one huge bowl that sits out for three hours.
3. Nest bowls of cold dip and salsa inside larger bowls of ice.
4. Set a phone timer for two hours after the food goes out. When it rings, swap or toss.

Tip-off

• Sit down. The co-host can handle the next drink request.
• Sound up on one screen, captions on the rest.
• Phones on silent and face down if your guests will tolerate it. At the very least, nobody reads a score alert out loud.
• Keep a clear path between the couch and the kitchen so people can get up without blocking anyone's view.
• Let the room find its own volume. Some crowds go silent for free throws and some never do. I've written more about the unwritten rules of a watching room in why we watch together.

Halftime

An NBA halftime is 15 minutes, which is just enough if you planned for it.

• Most things take longer than 15 minutes to cook, so the second sheet pan goes in late in the second quarter, timed to come out at the break.
• Swap out anything that has been sitting out close to two hours.
• Empty the bins before they overflow, and run the dishwasher if it's half full.
• Turn the drink station around: alcohol-free options to the front, coffee and tea out, and think about closing the bar at the start of the fourth quarter. People drink whatever is easiest to reach.
• Check on the kids. If tip-off was late, this is when the youngest ones start to melt down.

After the buzzer

• Don't rush people out, and don't start a fresh round either. Put out something to eat, make coffee or tea, and let the night wind down at the pace of the result. A win runs long. A loss empties the room fast.
• Make sure everyone has a safe way home. Check in quietly with the drivers, keep a local taxi number handy, and have a couch made up with a blanket for anyone who should stay. A guest on your couch is better than a guest on the road.
• Get leftovers into the fridge within two hours of when they went out, in shallow containers so they cool quickly, and send some home with guests.
• Do the cleanup that matters tonight and leave the rest for morning: food away, bins out, anything sticky wiped down. Foil-lined sheet pans are a five-minute job. Glasses can soak.
• Wipe the remote. At least one of the hands on it tonight was covered in wing sauce.

The last thing I do after every party is write the final score on a strip of masking tape and stick it inside the lid of the slow cooker. There are eleven strips in there now. Two of them are losses, and I remember those nights just as well.